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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHRIST. 



CHRISTIANITY 



AND 



THE CHRIST 



A STUDY OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 



BRADFORD PAUL RAYMOND, D.D 

President oy- The IVesleyan University 
MIDDLETOWN, CONN. 







NEW YORK: HUNT & EATON 
CINCINNATI: CRANSTON &. CURTS 

1894 



v< 



K^ 



Copyright, 1894, by 

HUNT & EAl'ON 

New York. 



THIS BOOK 
IS DEDICATED TO 

IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF 

TWENTY HAPPY YEARS OF OUR WORK IN THE 

PASTORATE AND THE COLLEGE. 



PREFACE. 

THE purpose of this book is to show 
that the Christian faith is reasonable. 
The whole subject is made to revolve 
around the Christ. The Christian Hfe in- 
volves a vital relation to him, the four gos- 
pels are a record of his life, his deeds, and 
his doctrines, of which the other books of the 
New Testament are an unfoldment. The 
Old Testament leads directly to him, the 
doctrine of the supernatural finds its strong- 
est support at last in his majestic person- 
ality, the needs of the sinner are met by 
him, the peace and joy of the believer are 
assured by him, the course of history is 
being and is to be determined by him, the 
hope of humanity is in him, and the reali- 
zation of our religious ideals is guaranteed 
by him. In a treatise so brief it was nee- 



viii Preface. 

essary to select a few of the essential points 
in the '* System of Christian Evidences'* 
and to ignore a great many critical ques- 
tions. The discussion of these must be 
left to the larger treatises on the subject. 
It is hoped, however, that although crit- 
ical questions have been for the most part 
avoided the results of such critical study 
have been fairly represented in the conclu- 
sions reached, and that all that is of im- 
portance in these questions has been car- 
ried in the few essentials treated. The 
chapters vary greatly in length. That on 
" Christ and the Prophets " is the longest. 
Since its purpose is to set forth the fact 
that the preparation for Christ was a vast 
historic movement, and not merely to es- 
tablish a few marvelous predictions, it was 
necessary to show the sweep of this move- 
ment and the evolution of its conditions in 
a somewhat extended way. Only in this 
way could the unique character of the 
movement be portrayed and its argumen- 
tative force made to appear. The same is 



Preface. ix 

true of the chapter on '^Christ and His- 
tory." 

Chapters III to VII inclusive, are all 
related to the supernatural, and must all 
be taken into account in any estimate of 
the argument for the supernatural. In- 
deed, no one line of argument can be iso- 
lated and fairly estimated. Each line of 
proof is related to every other, and it is 
the convergence of all lines in Christ that 
makes faith reasonable. 

Chapters VIII, IX, and XII involve cer- 
tain philosophic principles which could not 
be debated, but were essential to the argu- 
ment and must be assumed. These as- 
sumptions may all be summed up in the 
doctrine that our religious ideals are rational 
and must therefore be met. The only al- 
ternative is blank skepticism. We shall 
never consent to deny the rationality of 
these ideals in the interest of intellectual 
confusion and moral chaos. If Christ 
continues to satisfy these ideals the race 
will continue to believe in him and to recite 



X Preface. 

its creed, " I believe in God the Father 
Ahiiighty, Maker of heaven and earth : and 
in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord.'* 
Bradford P. Raymond. 

Middletmini, Conn., May, 1S94. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

CHRIST AND THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

PAGE 

Christianity revolves around the Christ — 

Christ as seen in the gospels 7, 8 

Christ in Paul's epistles 9, 10 

Christianity a spiritual life — 

Life not easily defined 11,12 

The Christian life in its manifestations. . . 12 

The word "life ** characteristic of John. . 12, 13 

Its characteristics in the synoptics I3» 14 

Related to the whole man — 

Scripture usage of the word " heart " 15 

Heart faith involves the intellect 16 

Heart faith involves the emotions 16 

The man must be put in motion by the act 

of will 17 

The purpose of the study 18 

CHAPTER II. 

CHRIST AND THE REVISED VERSION. 

The Revised Version and the gospel of the 
second century — 

Tertullian and his coadjutors 19-23 

Polycarp, Clement, and Pantoenius 20-23 

1 



2 Contents. 

PAGE 

Justin Martyr 23-28 

Tatian's Diatessaron 29 

Baur and John's gospel 30-32 

The outcome of scholarly work in this Jield — 

Mair's table 33 

Confirmatory lines 34 

Aiiother zvitness — 

Paul's four epistles 35 

The four central doctrines 35-37 

His intercourse with the apostles 38 

Variations in the manuscript — 

The three versions compared 40-44 

The outcome 43» 44 

CHAPTER in. 

CHRIST AND THE PROPHETS. 

The prophets — 

Their number 46, 47 

Differentiated from the priest 48 

Related to the hope of Israel 48-50 

The lower and the higher in prophecy. ... 51, 52 

The starting poiitt and the goal — 

The covenant and the Messias . 53-55 

The historic moveinent — 

The religious hope, how planted 55-57 

The religious hope, how rooted 57-^3 

The settlement in Canaan 64-66 

The monarchy 66-68 

Progress in ideals — 

Moral life conceived as subjective, personal, 

and universal 68-80 

Predictive prophecies — 

Balaam's prophecy 80 



Contents. 



PAGE 

The tribe of Judah and house of David. . . 8i, 82 

The Divine thought 83, 84 

The suffering servant of yehovah — 

The sacrificial system 85, 86 

The process of idealization 86-88 

Isaiah's mastery of the theme 87-90 

Conclusion 91 

CHAPTER IV. 

CHRIST AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 

Miracles denied — 

Paulus, Renan, Strauss 93, 94 

General considerations — 

Miracles defined 95 

Are miracles necessary ? 96, 97 

Not a violation of nature's laws 98 

Miracles and their context — 

Belong to a system of philosophy 99 

Position of modern philosophy 100-102 

Relation to Old Testament 102, 103 

Involved in the teaching of Jesus 103, 104 

The matchless character — 

Mill's testimony 105 

Renan's testimony 106 

Jean Paul Richter*s testimony 107 

Paulus's testimony 108 

Conclusion 109 

CHAPTER V. 

Christ's self-consciousness. 
The assumptions He makes — 

The New Testament narratives 110-112 

His relation to prophecy 11 2-1 15 



4 Contents. 

PAGE 

His attitude toward nature 115 

The sinlessness of Jesus 117, iiS 

He forgives sin 119, 120 

Authority over men 120, 121 

His attitude toward Jehovah 122, 123 

CHAPTER VL 

CHRIST AND THE RESURRECTION. 

Various naturalistic theories — 

The swoon theory 125 

Disciples competent witnesses 126-128 

Discrepancies exaggerated 128, 129 

Reno US theory — 

Vision hypothesis overworked 130-135 

What to do with Paul's testimony 135 

What Renan does not explain 135, 136 

The Lord's day 137, 138 

Apostles were chosen witnesses 138-140 

Appeal to evidence of the senses 140-143 

Conclusion 144 

CHAPTER Vn. 

CHRIST AND THE APOSTLE PAUL. 

PduPs conversion and life — 

Luke's account 145 

Paul's 14^ 

Renan* s account — 

Theory of remorse i47-i 50 

His fnay-have-beens overworked 151-153 

The great change — 

In relation to Messiah 153 

In relation to salvation 154 

His affections 154 



Contents. 5 

PAGE 

His emotions 154-156 

His explanation of the change 156, 157 

The conclusion 157, 158 

CHAPTER Vni. 

CHRIST AND THE SINNER. 

Sin — 

Our consciousness of it 159, 160 

Sin not inherited 161 

Sin at root is selfishness 162, 163 

Can man be redeemed? 163, 164 

Christ* s answer to the question — 

The first step is repentance 165-167 

The meaning of repentance 167 

The second step is faith 167, 168 

Filial faith and fatherly love go together. . i6g 

Love, when applied to God 169, 170 

Christ meets our necessities 171, 172 

CHAPTER IX. 

CHRIST AND THE BELIEVER. 

Our experience — 

Related to the sensibility 174 

Involves cognitive act 174, 175 

The great facts of experience — 

Paul's peace and joy 176-179 

Not exceptional. 180-182 

Church hymns and revivals 183-1S5 

This life, how sustaiited — 

A system of thought 185-1S7 

A divine life . . 187-189 

The meaning of our religious ideals — 189, 190 

No adverse facts can destroy them 191, 192 



6 Contents. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER X. 

CHRIST AND HISTORY. 

Christ's theory of man and its relation to slavery — 

Celsus and the early disciples 197 

Slavery and philosophy 199, 200 

The period of the Refor7nation — 

Philosophy and Church authority 204, 205 

Conflict of Church and State and individual 

freedom 205-210 

The new principle applied 211,212 

The Wesley an revival — 

The individual in modern civilization. . . . 2.\/\-iiti 

CHAPTER XI. 

CHRIST AND HUMANITY. 

The clai??i of Christianity and its reasons — 

The Old and New Testaments 218, 219 

Its 'doctrines, conquests, agencies, and 

problems 219-225 

Heathenism — 

Ethnic faiths and religious ideals 228-233 

Christ supplies defects and meets the de- 
mands of our nature 234-237 

CHAPTER XII. 

CHRIST AND IMMORTALITY. 

The question of the ages — 

Christ's teaching and science. 238-241 

The expectation of a future life 241-243 

Revelation needed — 

Christ's method and our ideals 244-248 

The poet's interpretation 249, 250 



CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHRIST. 



CHAPTER I. 

CHRIST AND THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

IT is important, first of all, to get a well- 
defined idea of the subject in hand 
and of the end to be reached by this 
study; and for our idea on the subject 
we must go to the original sources in 
the New Testament Scriptures. It is 
evident that the New Testament makes 
Christianity revolve around the Christ. 
There are many evidences in Matthew's 
gospel, such as his quotations from proph- 
ecy and its fulfillment in Christ, his ref- 
erences to the law, to Christ's Jewish gene- 
alogy, and to his use of Jewish thought, 
that he had the Jew in mind while he 
wrote, and that he used his material 



.HRTSTTANITY AND THE 



-. Chr 



TST. 



accordingly. Mark's gospel was just as 
evidently written for the Gentiles. He 
makes no reference to the Jewish law, but 
is careful to explain w^ords and usages 
with which the Gentiles would not be likely 
to be familiar. He deals largely with the 
external life of the Lord, and gives us a 
vivid picture of the things Jesus did and 
the circumstances under which he wrought 
the mighty works recorded. Luke's gospel 
looks toward neither Jew nor Gentile, but 
toward all men. John writes, according to 
his own words, to show that ^^ Jesus is the 
Christ, the Son of God.""^ He carries us 
on beyond the deeds and words of the 
Lord, and opens to us the depth of his 
nature, thereby showing us something of 
his relation to God and giving us grounds 
for faith in him, for the work which he 
undertook to do. 

If we examine Paul's epistles, some of 
which were written at an earlier date than 
the gospels, it is easy to see that Christ is 

* Jolin XX, 31. 



Christ and the Christian Life. 9 

always the central figure. He writes to 
the Galatians as follows : *^ When the full- 
ness of the time came, God sent forth his 
Son ; ""^ and he assumes that all the pre- 
ceding ages were preparatory for that 
advent ; to the Ephesians he declares 
that God proposes, in a ** dispensation 
of the fullness of the times, to sum up 
all things in Christ, the things in the 
heavens, and the things upon the earth/'f 
This carries the thought in Galatians 
on to the end of time, and then en- 
thrones Christ head over all. This phase 
of Christ's supremacy is emphasized again 
in his letter to the Philippians, in the fol- 
lowing sublime passage : ^' Wherefore also 
God highly exalted him, and gave unto 
him the name which is above every name ; 
that in the name of ^ Jesus every knee 
should bow ; *':{: and he returns to it in his 
letters to the Colossians and to the Romans, 
where the whole creation is related to 
him, and is made to go groaning and trav- 

* Gal. iv, 4. f Eph. i, 10. J Phil, ii, 9. 



10 Christianity and the Christ. 

ailing on in pain, working toward the reali- 
zation of the ideal for which Christ came. 
The Book of Acts is the earliest Church 
history. It begins the disclosure of the 
agencies through which Christ moves out 
into the centuries for the dominance of 
the world, while the prophetic Book of 
Revelation, with its eager eyes to the 
future, seeks with glowing imagery to por- 
tray the final and glorious consummation. 
The first and the most important teaching 
of the New Testament, that which is always 
and of necessity assumed when not explic- 
itly expressed, is that Jesus Christ is 
'^ the Light of the world,'' the ^^ Son of 
God,'' the only and all-sufficient Saviour. 
Take this out, and the remains are ^^ re- 
mains," fragments, and nothing more. 

A second characteristic, and one flowing 
directly from the first, is that Christianity 
in its most essential meaning is a life, a 
spiritual life, rooted in the Christ. But for 
this very reason, because Christianity is a 
life, it is hard to define. No one has 



Christ and the Christian Life. 11 

answered the question, What is Hfe? We 
may see the Christian Hfe in its manifes- 
tations in the individual, in word and 
deed, and if the words are rich with the 
spirit of the Master, and the deeds loyal to 
the law, ** thy neighbor as thyself," we call 
a man a Christian ; the life, however, existed 
before either the words which confessed 
it or the deeds which manifested it. This 
life is manifest also in the various creeds of 
Christendom ; like a fruitful root it has 
grown itself into the forms of thought of 
Catholic and Greek and of the various 
denominational creeds of Protestantism ; 
but it was before all formulated creeds, 
and the creeds are to be recognized as 
only the intellectual molds into which 
the thinking Church has run this flowing 
life. We may see it manifested in the in- 
stitutions of the Church, educational and 
philanthropic; in civil institutions, in con- 
stitutions and statutes. It shows itself in 
commerce, literature, art, and in all the 
forms of intercourse between men and 



12 Christianity and the Christ. 

nations; but it existed before its manifes- 
tation in these forms. These are the ex- 
ternal forms which address the senses ; 
but what is the spiritual life itself? Like 
every other form of life, it eludes all defi- 
nitions; put it into a word, and it is no 
longer life. A word is only a mental 
irritant which may help the living man to 
think something about life. We must not 
then be thrown into panic because under 
the needle point of a flippant skepticism 
we cannot answer, in perfectly fitting and 
satisfactory phrases, the question. What is 
the Christian life ? A very good answer is 
the Yankee*s answer, '^You tell, what is 
your life?** 

Undismayed, then, by the fact that we 
cannot define life, we may note that this 
word is characteristic with John ; it is he 
who reports Christ *s words to the Jews: 
'' Ye search the Scriptures, because ye 
think that in them ye have eternal life; 
and these are they which bear witness of 
me ; and ye will not come to me, that ye 



Christ and the Christian Life. 13 

may have life.' ' ^ From him we have those 
remarkable words in the parable of the 
Good Shepherd, '^ I came that they may 
have life, and may have it abundantly." f 
Paul exhorts the Colossians to set their 
minds *' not on the things that are upon the 
earth," and adds as his reason, '* For ye died, 
and j/our life is hid with Christ in God \'' % 
he counts all else but loss if he may but 
win Christ and the life which is by faith in 
him. The word is very infrequently used 
in the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, 
and Luke ; but the distinctive character- 
istics are nowhere else so boldly set forth. 
We there learn that we are to find life by 
losing it ; we must not suffer an offending 
hand or eye to prevent us from entering 
into life. In the Sermon on the Mount the 
Master lays bare the root of this life in the 
inner man ; it is a right heart, a heart 
that puts reconciliation with a brother 
before a gift at the altar; that will not 
tolerate the eye of lust ; that overcomes 

* John V, 39, 40. f John x, 10. % Col. iii, 2. 



14 Christianity and the Christ. 

evil with good, putting the merciless 
enemy to the blush by the deed of love ; 
that prays to God, and not as do the 
Pharisees, to be seen of men ; that forgives 
and expects to be forgiven ; that trusts 
God, who cares for the birds and will not 
forget his children ; that builds with un- 
shaken confidence and for eternity upon 
the Rock of ages, and not upon the sand. 
That comment upon the Preacher of the 
Sermon on the Mount, which went the 
rounds among the hearers, " He taught 
them as one having authority, and not as the 
scribes," ^ was no shrewd guess, but rather a 
flash of the soul's hidden fire, which always 
responds to the electric touch of truth. 

The Christian life, whose root John and 
Paul find in our relation to Christ, whose 
inner characteristics Jesus portrays in 
startling words in the Sermon on the 
Mount, is a life that carries with it the 
whole man, and is often comprehensively 
spoken of as the life of faith. Paul goes to 

* Matt, vii, 29. 



Christ and the Christian Life. 15 

the root of the matter when he says : 
'' With the heart man beheveth unto right- 
eousness/*"^ But the word heart has pe- 
cuHar significance in scriptural usage. We 
generally think of it as the seat of the affec- 
tions, and often use the term figuratively in 
that sense ; but in the Hebrew usage there 
was no such limitation ; with them it was 
** the central seat of the lifeblood, the central 
organ of the body, with a motive force of 
its own to set agoing the whole circula- 
tion of the blood, a propelling force to draw 
out the vital materials and energies and 
keep them moving in all directions, and an 
attractive force to absorb and concentrate 
the vital streams/' Haller calls it, *^ the 
first living and last dying thing ; '' its '* first 
motion is the sure sign of life, its stillness 
the sure sign of death/* It was to the 
Hebrew ^^ the center of all active life, . . . the 
workshop of all independent activity and 
vitality/* f 

It was the central unit, therefore, from 

* Rom. X, lo, f See Beck's Biblical Psychology, p. 8i. 



16 Christianity and the Christ. 

which went forth all the higher forms of 
spiritual power, in the processes of reflect- 
ive thought, the glow of moral emotion, 
and the act of free volition. The life of 
faith must not, then, be thought of as the 
credulous act of a superstitious man, since 
faith, even in its lowest exercise, involves 
all the powers, and in its highest, the 
heart-throb of faith, is the impulse which 
sets the whole man in motion and at his 
best. It is an act of the intellect ; the 
Christian believes something, and for 
reasons satisfactory to him, and that is an 
intellectual exercise. But that alone does 
not make a man a Christian ; the affections 
must be touched and the emotions kindled. 
Neither is this enough, for, however he 
may weep over his sins, or lustily sing, 
*' O, how I love Jesus ! " he may yet be the 
veriest fraud, a perfect caricature of Chris- 
tianity. When Jesus summoned Simon 
and Andrew from their nets on the Sea of 
Galilee the record informs us that *' they 
straightway left the nets, and followed 



Christ and the Christian Life. 17 

him. *' "^ And when he called James and 
John, the sons of Zebedee, *' they straight- 
way left the boat and their father, and 
followed him/'f Their act illustrates the 
Christian faith in this particular; they 
turned their belief in Jesus and their motives 
for following him into the act of following. 
However far the intellect may carry a man 
into a belief in the doctrines which Christ 
taught ; however deeply his emotions may 
be stirred, or powerfully his motives 
for action may crowd him on toward 
discipleship, unless, in obedience to these 
motives and in harmony with his be- 
lief, he put forth volition, and begin to 
follow, he comes short of Christian faith. 
This life of faith, then, brooks no rival; it 
commands the whole man. It appears, 
therefore, from our study of the New Tes- 
tament, that Christianity is a life ; it is a 
life of faith, which commands the intel- 
lect, affections, and will ; it is a life of faith 
in the Son of God. These are the three 

* Matt, iv, 20. f Matt, iv, 22. 



18 Christianity and the Christ. 

distinctive characteristics given to Chris- 
tianity in the New Testament. Leave out 
the third characteristic, and whatever else 
the faith maybe, it is not a Christian faith. 
This faith in Christ means that we find in 
and through him the satisfaction of our 
present rehgious needs (forgiveness of sin, 
regeneration, assurance, etc.), and the 
guarantee of our religious hopes, both for 
time and eternity. Can we reasonably re- 
ceive Christ's teaching and obey him at 
all hazards, even though it cost life itself? 
If we can, our faith is reasonable, and if we 
cannot, the Christian faith is a superstition. 
Assuming that this chapter has given a 
fairly well-defined idea of the subject in 
hand, we may now add that the purpose 
of this study is to show that the Christian 
faith is reasonable, and the only reasonable 
faith. 



Christ and the Revised Version. 19 



CHAPTER II. 

CHRIST AND THE REVISED VERSION. 

TTT'E have studied Christianity as we 
^ ^ find it set forth in the Revised 
Version of the New Testament, and have 
found it to be a Hfe, a hfe of faith in the 
Christ. We have called this Revised Ver- 
sion the original source of information ; but 
how shall we assure ourselves that this 
Gospel of ours is identical with the Gospel 
of the apostles ? The argument, exhaust- 
ively carried out, is a very long one ; but 
the gist of it can be very briefly stated. If 
we compare our Gospel with the wTitings 
of Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Clement of 
Alexandria, who lived in the latter part of 
the second century, we find that they had 
the very same Gospel that we have. They 
defend it as the Gospel that came down to 
them from the apostles ; and they had 



20 Christianity and the Christ. 

opportunity to know that it was the Gos- 
pel accepted by the universal Church. 
Tertullian^was Bishop of Hippo, in north- 
ern Africa, Irena^uswas Bishop of Lyons, in 
Gaul, and Clement was the head of a cele- 
brated school in Alexandria. They were 
learned men, had traveled widely, and must 
have known not only the faith of the 
Church* at that time, but what had been the 
faith of the Church for a very long time. 
We know, therefore, from their writings 
that far back in the second century the 
Church held and taught all the great essen- 
tial facts and truths of the Gospel, just as 
we hold and teach them. 

Moreover, there were living witnesses at 
that time connecting these writers directly 
with the apostles, so that they had the op- 
portunity of verifying the faith of the 
Church of their time by the testimony of 
those who had seen, heard, and conversed 
with the apostles. 

Clement was trained at Alexandria, un- 
der Pantaenus, in the school over which he 



Christ and the Revised Version. 21 

at a later time presided, and Pantsenus is 
represented as a hearer of the apostles. 
There can be Httle doubt that Clem- 
ent had opportunity of knowing the 
facts concerning the Hfe of Jesus from 
those who had heard the story from 
the apostles themselves. How eagerly 
these men would gather up the facts from 
such witnesses, how reverently they would 
regard them, and with what care would 
they preserve them ! Clement heard Pan- 
taenus speak often of these things. He 
writes : ** And these men, preserving the 
true tradition of the blessed teaching, 
directly from Peter and James, from John 
and Paul, the holy apostles, son receiving 
it from father (but how few are they who 
are like their fathers !), came by God*s prov- 
idence even to us, to deposit among us 
those seeds (of truth) which were derived 
from their ancestors and the apostles." '^ 
Polycarp, who became a martyr about 

* See Salmon's Introduction to the New Testament, 
p. 36. 



22 Christianity and the Christ. 

the year 155 A. D., when he was eighty-six 
years of age, had been a disciple of the apos- 
tle John, and Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, 
writes of him : '* I can recall the very place 
where Polycarp used to sit and teach, his 
manner of speech, his mode of life, his ap- 
pearance, the style of his address to the 
people, his frequent references to St. John, 
and to others who had seen the Lord ; how 
he used to repeat from memory their dis- 
courses, and the things which he had 
heard from them concerning our Lord, 
his miracles and his teaching, and how, 
being instructed himself by those who 
were eyewitnesses of the life of the Lord, 
there was in all that he said a strict agree- 
ment with the Scriptures/'"^ 

Such a witness as Polycarp, whose life- 
time runs back into the first century, who 
tells us that he knew St. John and others 
that had seen the Lord ; who was accus- 
tomed to repeat ^* from memory their dis- 

* See Salmon's Introduction to the New Testame^tt, 
p. 32. 



Christ and the Revised Version. 23- 

courses," according to Irenaeus ; whose 
faith was tested by the fires of persecution, 
and who ^^ steadfastly refused before the 
proconsul to deny his King and Saviour, 
whom he had served six and eighty years, 
and from whom he had experienced noth- 
ing but love and mercy ;"'^ who went 
joyfully to the stake and praised God 
amid the flames that he was worthy " to 
be numbered among his martyrs, to drink 
of the cup of Christ's suffering'' f — such a 
witness puts the question of the identity 
of our Gospel and that taught by the apos- 
tles almost beyond controversy. 

If we go back to the first half of the 
second century we find there another wit- 
ness for the facts and teachings of our gos- 
pels. Justin Martyr was born about the 
close of the first century, and died about 
the middle of the second. He was con- 
verted to the Christian faith after he had 
come to mature manhood, and we have 

* See Schaff s History of the Christ'uDi CJiurch^ vol. 
i, p. i66. \Ilnd. 



2^4 Christianity and the Christ. 

two of his works in our libraries to-day ; 
from these we learn that he had all the 
facts and teachings of the gospels. He 
held a discussion at Ephesus with the Jew 
Trypho, and, after giving him an account 
of his studies in philosophy and of his con- 
version to Christianity, he assures him that 
the Christians '^ have not believed empty 
fables or words without any foundation, 
but w^ords filled with the Spirit of God 
and big with power and flourishing with 
grace." He then proceeds to show from 
the Old Testament Scriptures that Jesus 
is the Christ. In the course of his argu- 
ment he makes so many references to the 
life of Christ that one could almost write 
out the whole Gospel narrative from this 
one work. He shows that John w^as his fore- 
runner, that he was born of a virgin, and 
laid in a manger because there w^as no room 
in the inn ; he describes the visit of the 
Magi, mentions Bethlehem as the place of 
Christ's birth, Herod's wrath, the massacre 
of the innocents, the flight into Egypt with 



Christ and the Revised Version. 25 

Joseph and Mary, and' his return after Ar- 
chelaus had succeeded Herod. He speaks 
of his being thirty years of age when he 
began his public ministry, of his baptism 
by John, whose dress and food he men- 
tions, and of the descent of the Holy Ghost 
in the form of a dove. He quotes the two 
great commandments by which Christ 
sums up all righteousness, describes his 
triumphal entry into Jerusalem, enters into 
the details of his trial and crucifixion, 
speaks of his answers to the Pharisees, his 
silence before Pilate, mentions his resur- 
rection and ascension, and assumes that 
these are the well-known and universally 
accepted facts concerning Jesus throughout 
the whole Church. These references which 
come from the dialogue with Trypho might 
be greatly extended. They show conclu- 
sively that our Gospel is the old Gospel. 
When we remember that Justin lived from 
the latter part of the first century until the 
middle of the second ; that Christianity 
had spread far and wide over the region 



26 Christianity and the Christ. 

where he spent his life ; that he was not 
converted until he had come to mature 
manhood ; that he was a philosopher and 
had sought rest for his soul in all the phi- 
losophies, and that finally he was led by 
an aged man to the light and the life found 
in Jesus of Nazareth and became an ardent 
propagandist of the faith, we have very 
cogent reasons for believing that his tes- 
timony as to the content of the gospels is 
entirely trustworthy. The question whether 
Justin had the four gospels that we now 
have has been much debated. He neither 
gives the names of the authors whom he 
quotes, nor does he quote the gospels ac- 
curately. It has been conjectured that he 
drew his information from some gospels 
extant in his time, but now lost, or that 
he had many of his facts from tradition. 
If that were true, it would only show that 
the facts narrated in our gospels were 
widespread, and that they constituted the 
substance of the '' lost gospels " and the 
content of current tradition. But the argu- 



Christ and the Revised Version. 27 

ment is forced and exaggerated which at- 
tempts to deny to Justin the knowledge 
of the four gospels. In the first place he 
informs us that the writings to which he 
refers are memoirs of the life of the Lord, 
that they are called gospels, that they were 
written by the apostles and by companions 
of the apostles. These facts point directly 
to our four gospels. Matthew and John 
were apostles, and Mark and Luke were 
companions of apostles. He assures us 
that these gospels were read in the churches 
in connection with the prophets. We 
know from the writings of Irenaeus, who 
became Bishop of Lyons about i8o A. D., 
that the four gospels we now have w^ere 
the gospels then accepted by the Church 
as having apostolic authority, the gospels 
read in the services of the Church in con- 
nection with the prophets. It would have 
been almost, if not quite, impossible to have 
introduced Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John 
in the place of other gospels accepted in 
the time of Justin. Irenaeus was born and 



28 Christianity and the Christ. 

brought up ill Asia Minor, and must have 
been thoroughly familiar with the practice 
of the Church in this respect during the 
very period of which Justin writes. The 
improbability of the hypothesis which de- 
nies to Justin the knowledge of these gos- 
pels is, therefore, very great. And as to 
the accuracy of his quotations it may be 
said that they are as accurate as were his 
quotations from the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures, which w^ere certainly in his possession. 
The fact is, the Scripture rolls were incon- 
venient ; they were not divided into chapter 
and verse as our New Testament is ; there 
was no concordance lying at hand to enable 
him to verify his quotations, and he quoted 
from memory, or often only attempted to 
give the substance of the passage to which 
he referred. 

It would require too much space to fol- 
low in detail the arguments by which ex- 
perts seek to identify the gospels used by 
Justin with the four accepted gospels. We 
must satisfy ourselves, therefore, by giving 



Christ and the Revised Version. 29 

a few illustrations of the method of the ar- 
gument. It has been claimed all along the 
centuries that Tatian, a companion and 
disciple of Justin, composed a harmony of 
the four gospels, which he called the Dia- 
tessaron,^ But this harmony could not be 
found. There was also a commentary by 
Ephraem the Syrian on this Diatessaron^ 
and this was lost. The result was a denial 
that there ever were any such documents. 
This latter document has, however, been 
recently discovered, and it shows that 
there was such a harmony, and that Ta- 
tian used John's gospel ^* as the framework 
of this harmony.'' f If Tatian had the 
four gospels Justin must also have had 
them. Another theory, which puts the 
origin of Luke's gospel late in the second 
century, has recently been demolished. 
Marcion lived about 140 A. D. He com- 
posed a gospel, using Luke as its basis, and 

* The word is a Greek word which means " through 
the four." 

t See Alexander M air's Studies in the Christian Evi- 
dences^ p. 147. 



30 Christianity and the Christ. 

the critic has set up the claim that Mar- 
cion's was the earher and that Luke was 
constructed out of it. Professor Sanday, 
of Oxford, has recently subjected this 
question to an elaborate investigation, and 
even the author of Supernatural Religion, 
a stubborn opponent, is obliged to concede 
that his *' earlier hypothesis is untenable," 
and that Marcion must have had Luke's 
gospel when he constructed his own. If 
Marcion had it, Justin certainly must have 
had it.''^ John's gospel has been in the 
hottest of the fight. Baur insisted that it 
was not written until i6o A. D. In sup- 
port of this conclusion Baur relied on the 
Clementine Homilies, which were written 
about i6o A. D., and which, according to 
him, showed no knowledge of John's gos- 
pel. But at that time we had only a part 
of these Homilies. In 1853 a German 
scholar discovered the remaining fragments 
and published them, and in that fragment 

* See Salmon's Introduction to the New Testauient, 
p. 189. 



Christ and the Revised Version. 31 

there appears the clear quotation from 
John ix, 1-3. In Homily XIX, chap, xxii, 
we find the following indubitable reference 
to this passage : 

** Whence our Teacher, when we inquired 
of him, in regard to the man who was 
blind from his birth, and recovered his 
sight, if this man sinned, or his parents, 
that he should be born blind, answered, 
Neither did he sin at all, nor his parents, 
but that the power of God might be 
made manifest through him in healing 
sins of ignorance/' Hilgenfeld ^' at once 
acknowledged the question as finally- 
closed/* The final outcome of this study 
may be seen in the following : *^ According 
to Baur and his immediate followers, we 
have less than one fourth of the New Tes- 
tament belonging to the first century. 
According to Hilgenfeld, the present 
head of Baur's school, we have somewhat 
less than three fourths belonging to the 
first century, while substantially the same 
thing may be said in regard to Holtzmann. 



32 Christianity and the Christ. 

According to Renan, we have distinctly 
more than three fourths of the New Testa- 
ment falling within the first century, and 
therefore within the apostolic age. This 
surely indicates a very decided and ex- 
traordinary retreat since the time of Baur's 
grand assault, that is, within the last fifty 
years." ^ 

The attempt which has been made to 
show that a large part of our New Testa- 
ment originated in the second century, and 
that it was therefore not to be trusted as an 
account of the Lord's teaching, has utterly 
failed. Baur started out to show that Mat- 
thew was written not earlier than 130 A. D., 
Mark 150 A. D., Luke 150 A. D., and John 
160 or perhaps as late as 170 A. D. As a re- 
sult of the discovery of ancient manuscripts, 
and of a more critical estimate of all the 
data in the case, there has been a gradual 
abandonment of this hypothesis. The stud- 
ies in this subject have been so exhaustive 
and conclusive that there is no reason to 

^ See Mair's Studies iti the Christian Evidences, p. 154. 



Christ and the Revised Version. 33 



expect the conclusions reached will ever be 
materially changed. It is not likely that 
any competent critic will ever again place 
the origin of the synoptic gospels in the 
second century."^ 

There are many other confirmatory lines 
of evidence which may be mentioned : the 
writings of the heretics of the early part of 
the second century, such as Basilides and 
Valentinus, and the recognition they give 
to the gospels; the discovery of manu- 
scripts such as those specified above ; a few 

* The following table, taken from Dr. Alexander Mair's 
Studies in the Christian Evidences^ will show the tend- 
ency and outcome of this critical study : 











73 






G* 












































'0 


c 

(L) 






*4> 

1^ 


'0 




Matthew.... 


13C+ 


no 


70 


704- 


84 


66 


68 


70+ 


Mark 


150+ 


73 


58 


81+ 


76 


100 


75 


69 


Luke 


150 


100-3 


80 


100 


94 


90 


80 


80 


John 


160+ 


150 


120 


130+ 


125 


130 


125 


95 



The table will explain itself. The names above are 
the names of eminent scholars, and the figures below 
show the several estimates as to the time when the gos- 
pels were written. 
3 



34 Christianity and the Christ. 

letters from apostolic fathers, such as the 
epistles of Ignatius, Polycarp, and Barna- 
bas, dating from 70 A. D. to 120 A.D. ; "^ 
the translations of the New Testament 
into Syriac and Latin ; the earliest known 
list of New Testament books, such as the 
Muratorian Fragment^ and a few fragments 
from the Greek Apologists dating from 
120 A. D. to 170 A. D. These all throw 
light upon the problem. An exhaustive 
study of these lines of evidence would 
serve to confirm us in the belief that the 
New Testament originated in the first 
century, as the Church has always supposed, 
and that it records the deeds and words of 
the Lord with substantial accuracy. 

We have one witness whose testimony 
carries us back beyond the middle of the 
first century into the very heart of the 
times and community where these gospels 
originated. This witness is none other 
than Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, a man 
of large brain and thoroughly disciplined 

■^ See Westcott's Canon of the New Testament. 



Christ and the Revised Version. 35 

mind, a famous debater, and at one time 
the most bitter opponent of the Christian 
faith. What is his testimony? If we re- 
duce the number of his epistles to the four 
which are so universally accepted as to 
put them beyond controversy, we have 
First and Second Corinthians and the 
Epistles to the Galatians and to the Ro- 
mans. It is sufficient to say that Paul 
was put to death under Nero probably in 
the year 64 A. D., and that some of these 
epistles run back probably more than fif- 
teen years beyond that time. 

What do they teach ? 

That Christ is the Messiah, and that in 
him the prophecies are fulfilled, must be 
put first. He goes back to this thought in 
all his great speeches ; he makes it central 
in all his letters. It appears in his account 
of the covenant made with Abraham ; it is 
always present in the emphasis he puts 
upon faith as the condition upon which 
Gentiles as well as Jews may become heirs 
according to the promise. There is but 



36 Christianity and the Christ. 

one rational explanation of this faith, and 
that is that Paul was forced to believe that 
by his mighty works, and his mightier 
words and character, Jesus met all those 
expectations which the prophets had cre- 
ated concerning the Messiah. 

The second fundamenta-l thought with 
Paul was '^ Christ crucified." In this he glo- 
ried. He seems to be in possession of all the 
facts relating to the crucifixion. He does 
not give much space to details, but in his 
account of the Lord^s Supper ^ he seems 
to have before his mind the circumstances 
under which this memorial was instituted. 
He turns to the deeper significance of the 
cross in its relation to faith and salvation. 

The third great truth upon which Paul 
dwells is the doctrine of the resurrection. 
This is the culmination of the whole mirac- 
ulous career of the Lord. He does not 
intend to belittle the many other mighty 
works which were wrought by Christ and 
his apostles. On the contrary, he assumes 

* I Cor. xi, 23-26. 



Christ and the Revised Version. 37 

in his letter to the Church at Corinth that 
the power to work miracles was one of the 
gifts to the Church, and appeals to this 
power as well-known among^them. In 
his defense of his own apostleship he says : 
** Truly the signs of an apostle Avere wrought 
among you in all patience, by signs, and 
wonders, and mighty deeds. ""^ 

We have mentioned three points in 
Paurs creed. They are Christ the Mes- 
siah, Christ the crucified, and Christ the 
risen Lord. He is always ready to stake 
his life upon these doctrines. In order to 
complete the sweep of his thought we 
ought to add one more point, namely, 
Christ the glorified. His thought always 
moves toward Christ enthroned. To him 
every knee shall bow, every tongue shall 
confess his name. 

These are the central themes of Paul's 
theology, and they imply a wide knowl- 
edge of the facts of Christ's life. For, ac- 
cording to his own testimony, his knowl- 

'^ 2 Cor. xii, 12. 



38 Christianity and the Christ. 

edge came first from the Lord himself, who 
called him to this apostleship ; and then, 
after having spent some time in retirement, 
he went up to Jerusalem ; and in his epis- 
tles he gives us a very impressive account 
of his intercourse with Peter and John, 
and with James, the brother of the Lord. 
Did he ask them no questions about the 
deeds and words of the Lord ? He must 
have seen and known intimately, and must 
have conversed frequently with some of 
that famous five hundred who saw the 
Lord after his resurrection. One can but 
ask. Is Paul the man to neglect such an op- 
portunity? Baur is right when he says of 
Paul: ^* He who could speak so definitely 
and in such detail about matters of fact 
in the gospel history as the apostle does 
could not have been unacquainted with the 
rest of its chief incidents."^ 

We need now to remember that all of 
Paul's letters, with the Acts of the Apos- 
tles, are to be taken into this argument if 

* See Mair's Studies in the Christiaji Evidences, p. 123. 



Christ and the Revised Version. 39 

we would get the complete confirmation 
of the teaching by the four gospels ; to 
remember also that Saul the persecutor 
became Paul the Christian between the 
years 34 A. D. and 37 A. D. With such a 
man, broad-minded, well disciplined, a re- 
ligious zealot, a ^' slaughter-breathing " per- 
secutor ; with such a conversion, captured 
at midday by the Lord himself; tremen- 
dously alive to this faith from the hour 
when he saw Stephen's far-away gaze into 
heaven to the dread hour when the grim 
headsman executed that bloody state pa- 
per from Nero which made him immor- 
tal — it takes a great deal of audacity, and a 
radical determination to get rid of the 
supernatural, to deny to this man an accu- 
rate knowledge of the essential facts and 
teaching of those chosen witnesses who 
went out and in with the Lord for the 
space of three years, that they might be 
qualified for the mission of which they 
were clearly conscious. 

One other objection must be noticed. 



40 



Christianity and the Christ. 



Even if it be conceded that we have the 
New Testament of the first century, it may 
still be objected that there are many thou- 
sand variations in the manuscripts from 
which we get our New Testament. Experts 
reckon at least one hundred and fifty thou- 
sand such variations, and the fair inference 
seems to be that a book that comes out of 
such chaos is entirely untrustworthy. But 
a little study of the subject will lead to 
the opposite conclusion. A glance at the 
passage below, taken from John xii, i-8, 
will illustrate this point, and furnish the 
only argument needed : 



AUTHORIZED 
VERSION. 

Then Jesus six 
days before the pass- 
over came to Beth- 
any, where Lazarus 
was which had been 
dead, whom he raised 
from the dead. There 
they made him a sup- 
per ; and Martha 
served : but Lazarus 
was one of them that 
sat at the table with 
him. Then took 
Mary a pound of 
ointment of spike- 



REVISED 
VERSION. 

Jesus therefore six 
da^'^s before the pass- 
over came to Beth- 
any, where Lazarus 
was, whom Jesus 
raised from the dead. 
So they made him 
a supper there ; and 
Martha served ; but 
Lazarus was one of 
them that sat at 
meat with him. 
Mary therefore took 
a pound of ointment 
of spikenard, very 



DOUAV 
VERSION. 

Jesus therefore six 
da^^s before the pasch 
came to Bethania, 
where Lazarus had 
been dead, whom 
Jesus raised to life. 
And they made him 
a supper there : and 
Martha served, but 
Lazarus was one of 
them that were at 
table with him. 
Mary therefore took 
a pound of ointment 
of right spikenard. 



Christ and the Revised Version. 41 



AUTHORIZED 
VERSION. 

nard,very costly, and 
anointed the feet of 
Jesus, and wiped his 
feet with her hair: 
and the house was 
filled with the odor 
of the ointment. 
Then saith one of 
his disciples, Judas 
Iscariot, Simon's 
son, which should be- 
tray him, Why was 
notthisointmentsold 
for three hundred 
pence, and given to 
the poor? This he 
said, not that he 
cared for the poor ; 
but because he was 
a thief, and had the 
bag, and bare what 
was put therein. 
Then said Jesus, Let 
her alone : against 
the day of my bury- 
ing hath she kept 
this. For the poor 
always ye have with 
you ; but me ye have 
not always. 



REVISED 
VERSION. 

precious, and anoint- 
ed the feet of Jesus, 
and wiped his feet 
with her hair : and 
the house was filled 
with the odor of the 
ointment. But Ju- 
das Iscariot, one of 
his disciples, which 
should betray him, 
saith. Why was 
not this ointment 
sold for three hun- 
dred pence, and 
given to the poor? 
Now this he said, 
not because he cared 
for the poor ; but 
because he was a 
thief, and having the 
bag took away what 
was put therein. Je- 
sus therefore said, 
Suffer her to keep 
it against the day of 
my burying. For 
the poor ye have al- 
ways with you ; but 
me ye have not al- 
ways. 



DOUAY 
VERSION. 

of great price, and 
anointed the feet of 
Jesus, and wiped his 
feet with her hair : 
and the house was 
filled with the odor of 
the ointment. Then 
one of his disciples, 
Judas Iscariot, he 
that was about to be- 
tray him, said : Why 
was not this oint- 
ment sold for three 
hundred pence, and 
given to the poor ? 
Now he said this, not 
because he cared for 
the poor ; but be- 
cause he was a thief, 
and having the purse, 
carried the things 
that were put there- 
in. Jesus therefore 
said : Let her alone, 
that she may keep it 
against the day of my 
burial, for the poor 
you havealways with 
you ; but me you 
have not always. 



If we compare the Revised Version with 
the other two we shall find that counting 
the differences in words used, in arrange- 
ment of phrases and sentences, in omis- 
sions, additions, and in spelling, there are 



42 Christianity and the Christ. 

at least ten variations in the first verse. 
The Revised Version begins with the 
words, ^^ Jesus therefore," and the Author- 
ized Version, with the words, *' Then 
Jesus." The Douay Version uses the 
briefer word ^^ pasch " for ^^passover." 
The Revised Version reads, '^ whom Jesus 
raised from the dead;" the Authorized 
Version, ^' which had been dead, whom he 
raised from the dead ; " while the Douay 
Version reads, ^^ where Lazarus had been 
dead, whom Jesus raised to life." The 
Douay Version reads, '' pasch," the two 
others, " passover ; " the Douay Version 
spells Bethany, ^'Bethania." It is quite 
possible that fifty, and perhaps twice 
that number of variations, could be made 
in this selection of eight verses from St. 
John. Nevertheless it is perfectly clear 
that the same ideas are communicated in 
each of the three accounts. Continue the 
comparison of the Revised Version with 
these two versions throughout the whole 
New Testament, and the variations might 



Christ and the Revised Version. 43 

run up into the tens of thousands, and yet 
not affect a single doctrine. If, therefore, 
we arrange the seventeen hundred and 
sixty manuscripts and fragments of manu- 
scripts known to New Testament scholars 
at the time the Revised Version was made, 
in parallel columns, and carry out this 
study, the variations might easily run up 
to one hundred and fifty thousand, as 
critics say they do. But the study of the 
above passage shows that they are inciden- 
tal, accidental, and non-essential. The 
question of supreme importance is the 
question upon what these manuscripts 
agree, and the answer to that question is 
that they agree upon everything important 
in doctrine or essential to faith. 

The variations which affect any of the 
teachings of the New Testament are few, 
and the variations which materially affect 
any important doctrine may be counted 
on the fingers of one hand. Indeed, one 
could make any one of the complete manu- 
scripts or nearly complete manuscripts his 



44 Christianity and ihe Christ. 

Bible without changing a single article of 
his faith. If, then, anyone is disposed to 
make much of these variations in their 
bearing upon the doctrines of the New 
Testament, that fact shows a disposition to 
exaggerate their importance. We may- 
trust the New Testament w^e have with un- 
wavering confidence. As a result of the 
work done by devout scholars in giving us 
the Revised Version we may get nearer 
the exact ideas of the apostles and the 
Christ than any generation of biblical stu- 
dents since the close of the first century. 



Christ and the Prophets. 45 



CHAPTER III. 

CHRIST AND THE PROPHETS. 

THE study of prophecy in its relation 
to Christ has often been occupied 
with showing that Christ fulfilled some 
particular prediction. This aspect of the 
subject sets forth in a startling way the 
activity of the Spirit of God upon the 
mind of the prophet, but it has its limita- 
tions. It exhibits only a very small part 
of the subject, and that part in an isolated 
way. It is only when we study ** prophet- 
ism '' in a broader way ; when we see the 
prophetic spirit at work in the inner life of 
a great nation, in its institutions, civil and 
ecclesiastical ; when we see it reaching on 
through the long centuries, carrying forward 
from the beginning its lofty spiritual ideals, 
adapting itself to the successive generations 
with its warnings and its hopes, touching 



46 Christianity and the Christ. 

and seeking to lift up and ennoble every 
individual life ; it is only when we catch thus 
a bird*s-eye view of its mighty sweep, and 
the unbroken continuity of its resistless 
current, that we begin to appreciate its 
meaning and see its evidential value. This 
chapter seeks to set forth this great move- 
ment rather than the startling fulfillment 
of particular predictions. 

We shall see first of all that the pro- 
phetic office w^as far more common than 
we have been accustomed to suppose. If 
the question w^ere asked, '' Who were the 
prophets?" the answer from any well- 
trained Sunday-school scholar would be : 
^' They were Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Jere- 
miah, Ezekiel, and Daniel." It is quite 
doubtful whether we should get the names 
of Huldah, Urijah, Hanan, Ahijah, Iddo, 
Jehu, Obed, Gad, Nathan, Saul, and He- 
man. Balaam would be left out and the 
great schools of prophets overlooked ; and 
yet we learn that Samuel organized such 
schools, and from time to time we see them 



Christ and the Prophets. 47 

appearing in large companies. We read in 
the Book of Kings that when EHjah was 
about to leave Elisha, and the two stood by 
the Jordan, ** fifty men of the sons of the 
prophets went, and stood over against them 
afar off;"^ that when Jezebel threatened 
and destroyed many of the prophets, Oba- 
diah, who feared the Lord, ^^ took an hun- 
dred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a 
cave, and fed them with bread and water ; "f 
and again, that '' the king of Israel gath- 
ered the prophets together, about four hun- 
dred men," ^ to inquire whether he should 
go up against Ramoth-gilead. It is clear 
that the vocation of the prophet was much 
more common than we have been accus- 
tomed to suppose. 

What, then, are the distinctive character- 
istics of the prophets ? The answer to that 
question cannot be given in a word. They 
were preachers of righteousness to their 
own times ; they were social reformers ; 

* 2 Kings ii, 7. f i Kings xviii, 4. 

if I Kings xxii, 6. 



48 Christianity and the Christ. 

they were the incarnate conscience of 
Israel ; they were the *^ watchdogs " over 
the spiritual interests of the nation. They 
differed from the priests in that they dealt 
with the kernel of righteousness, the spir- 
itual content of individual and national 
holiness, while the priests developed an 
external form for that life, through which 
it wrought upon the times. The priestly 
teaching had much to say about sacrifices, 
and the ritual and paraphernalia of sacri- 
fice ; it prescribed rules for life, and ran 
at last into a burdensome ceremonialism 
which Christ swept away as an intolerable 
bondage. 

The religion of Israel has been called the 
religion of hope ; and such it was if we 
judge it by the prophet and the role he 
played in it ; but it is a hope which has a 
very dark background. There is very little 
to be hoped for the world from the times 
of the patriarchs, little from that multitude 
that came out of Egypt. They were ready 
to go back to Egypt, to the '* leeks and the 



Christ and the Prophets. 49 

onions/' ready to dance around the calf 
which Aaron made, lacking apparently in 
all those heroic qualities so essential to 
Israel's success. There was little to be 
hoped from the monarchy. Solomon's 
brilliant reign culminated in utter collapse 
of spiritual life ; his harem led him into 
the grossest idolatry, and idolatry sapped 
the lifeblood of the nation. The division 
of the monarchy under Jeroboam and 
Rehoboam, the rapid growth of idolatry, 
the wickedness and utter barbarity of many 
of the kings, the rising of the great heathen 
monarchies, the doom ever impending 
from Assyria and Cheildea, the long, weary 
years of captivity, the drift into barren 
ceremonialism, the utter destruction of 
the holy city and sacred temple, and the 
dispersion of the chosen people among all 
the nations of the earth — what is there in 
all this side of Israel's history to foster 
courage or inspire hope ? And yet Israel's 
religion is, above all other things, the reli- 
gion of hope. 



50 Christianity and the Christ. 

It is at just this point that the prophet 
appears, and that, too, as the all-important 
human factor in Israel's religion. He is 
the man who has light in his own house 
when every other house is dark as Egypt ; 
he always foresees the day of triumph, and 
it is his vocation to proclaim it. Scourg- 
ing, desolation, and captivity must come ; 
but in the path of devastation follow na- 
tional thrift, the ringing songs of joy, and 
the jubilant notes of victory. The prophet 
is God's man ; he is called of God and in- 
spired by God ; he knows the divine will 
and the goal toward which Israel moves ; 
he knows that he is the heaven-commis- 
sioned herald, sent to proclaim the con- 
quest which Jehovah will make of the 
nations and the glory which shall be upon 
Israel."^ It is this unique relation to 
Jehovah which accounts for his hope 
when the cause seems to be lost, and 
for his courage when his message seems 
to be either the foolish fancy of a 

* See Isa. lix. 



Christ and the Prophets. 51 

dreamer or the incoherent utterance of a 
madman. 

There are marked gradations among the 
prophets in their knowledge of God and 
of his will. As a general principle the 
earlier prophets are of a lower order than 
the later. There is more of vengeance 
and vindictiveness in the manifestations of 
this gift in the time of the Judges, and less 
of ethical content in their teaching than in 
the laterprophets. This must not be under- 
stood as implying that God's Spirit was not 
moving upon the people, and guiding the 
development of their life. It was, indeed, a 
rough age, but an army with cannon, spread- 
ing desolation on every hand, seems some- 
times to be necessary in order to make way 
for righteousness. If God is to work out 
his will through men he must use such men 
as he finds in the time to which he comes. 
The method and means used by a Samson 
will be largely determined by the hour in 
which he lives, and by his own character. 
Samuel hewing Agag to pieces "before 



52 Christianity and the Christ. 

the Lord '' is a grim illustration of the age 
just passing away, and affords a striking 
contrast to the teaching of Isaiah, who 
emphasizes the thought that the blessings 
promised to Israel are to be shared by all 
the nations ; a striking contrast to Jeremiah, 
who sees that the time is coming when a new 
covenant will be made, and that the chief 
consideration under that covenant will be 
its inwardness — its power over the thought, 
the heart, and the life. 

This principle of growth in revelation 
has sometimes been so exaggerated as to 
imply that there can be nothing high or 
holy in the earliest revelation ; and if such 
teaching be found there it must be rele- 
gated to a later time. This is a false idea of 
the principle. The germs of all the great 
principles of revelation are found in the 
oldest Scriptures, and yet they are germs, 
and sporadic at that ; they are little ap- 
preciated by the people, and are only to a 
very limited extent made effective in their 
lives. Aristotle's principle, '^ The nature 



Christ and the Prophets. 53 

of that which is, is to be known from its 
mature condition,'* is universally applicable. 
The eagle shows what the eagle's egg did 
not ; the full-grown man what the babe did 
not ; an advanced civilization what a few 
unorganized tribes cannot ; and the revela- 
tion shows by this principle of growth how 
intimately it is related to the method of 
progress in all life : in the animal, the man, 
the nation, and in the final civilization 
which is being wrought out by the race 
itself. The analogy is as wide as crea- 
tion. Revelation grows. It took time 
for Israel to get full possession of the 
gift of prophecy, and we must therefore 
look to the later periods of his history 
for the most perfect manifestations of this 
gift. This principle, if clearly understood, 
will contribute to the understanding of 
many of the difficulties of the earlier Old 
Testament Scriptures. 

In our study of prophecy, remembering 
that we seek to discover only its more im- 
mediate relation to Christ, we need first of 



54 Christianity and the Christ. 

all to fix the point of departure and the goal 
toward which revelation moves. We find 
then, even from the most cursory glance at 
the prophetic literature, that the eyes of 
the prophet are always fixed upon that 
covenant relation entered into between 
Jehovah and Abram which made Israel a 
chosen people. Explore these sacred books 
at any period, from Malachi to Moses; un- 
cover the secret thought of prophet, priest, 
king, judge, or lawgiver, and you find 
there that which is so clearly presupposed 
that it hardly needs to be stated, the fre- 
quent declaration and the constant assump- 
tion of that favored relation between 
Jehovah and Israel. In its relations to 
this religion of hope we cannot easily over- 
estimate the fact that the prophetic point 
of view always presupposes this Jehovah- 
Abrahamic covenant, and that, too, as an 
ancient possession from the misty and 
distant past. 

The goal of the prophetic movement is 
the new covenant which is to be made with 



Christ and the Prophets. 55 

Israel, and which is to be made actual 
through the coming of the Messiah. A 
brief study of the prophetic writings would 
show us the various phases of this goal 
as it is seen by the several prophets, and 
also the line of advance made toward the 
goal. 

We may now see the prophetic spirit 
moving in Israel as we study the method 
by which this covenant relation becomes 
planted and rooted in the life and institu- 
tions of the people. Such an ideal, in 
order to become fixed and effective, must 
be spread among the people, must take 
possession of their thought and ferment 
there until it becomes a conviction radical 
and national; it must become contagious, 
enkindling the deeper emotions, producing 
the joy that breaks forth in song and the 
courage that fears no enemy ; it must en- 
ter into their institutions, there to mold 
the whole body of the people ; otherwise 
Abram remains a lone fanatic, and neither 
Israel nor the race is blessed. This is a 



56 Christianity and the Christ. 

matter of necessity if the divine purpose is 
to be worked out through men. 

Turning to the record, then, we find 
that long before Israel went down into 
Egypt there came down from on high 
upon the soul of an aged man the revela- 
tion that in him was WTapped up a great 
family history. But such a fact could 
not stand alone ; it was too unique, and 
unique facts are especially in need of 
favorable conditions. The supernatural 
of the gospels could not stand if guaran- 
teed only by a known impostor; the 
supernatural needs the character of Jesus 
Christ. We may notice that this promise 
is repeated at critical periods in Abram's 
faith, and that it became an epoch-making 
factor in the patriarchal narratives. The 
first promise is made when Abram leaves 
his father's house in Haran and goes 
down into Canaan ; it is repeated when 
Abram and Lot divide the land and Lot 
turns to the ^^ well-watered plain of Jordan ; '' 
it recurs again when Abram complains 



Christ and the Prophets. 57 

that he has no heir through whom the 
promise may be made good. It is repeated 
several times in the seventeenth chapter of 
Genesis, where we have an account of the 
covenant of circumcision and the promise 
that Sarai shall bear a son. It always re- 
lates to Abram or his family, and is in- 
tended to encourage faith and nourish that 
hope w^hich is big with blessing for Israel 
and ultimately for the world. 

A new factor appears when, some fifteen 
hundred years before the Christian era, Is- 
rael was delivered from the land of bond- 
age and brought into the land of Canaan. 
The national hope had long been working 
under false limitations in Egypt ; it must 
have been easy to believe that Jehovah 
had forgotten his people. To make 
*^ bricks without straw,** and to feel the 
stinging crack of the bosses lash;' to 
think that these fat and sleek oppress- 
ors serve idols, while I and my brethren, 
a chosen race, serve Jehovah, was not 
favorable to the life of faith. The stress 



58 Christianity and the Christ. 

put upon faith by these untoward circum- 
stances appears in the communication 
made to Moses at the burning bush : " I 
have surely seen the affliction of my peo- 
ple which are in Egypt, and have heard 
their cry by reason of their taskmasters ; 
for I know their sorrows ; and I am come 
down to deliver them out of the hand of 
the Egyptians, and to bring them up out 
of that land unto a good land and a large, 
unto a land flowing with milk and honey."^ 
What, then, was the effect of this promise 
and its fulfillment ? If by some divine 
quickening we could look into the inner 
life of that host on the farther shores of 
the Red Sea, and especially into that of 
their leaders, we should see thought shap- 
ing itself into definite form concern- 
ing God and his resistless power, and 
hear that thought singing itself out in 
songs triumphant : '' Thy right hand, O 
Lord, is "glorious in power. Thy right 
hand, O Lord, dasheth in pieces the en- 

* Exod. iii, 7, 8. 



Christ and the Prophets. 59 

emy."'^ For one glorious moment Jeho- 
vah stands confessed, supreme over all the 
idol gods of Egypt. '^ Who is like unto 
thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is 
like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in 
praises, doing wonders ? Thou stretchedst 
out thy right hand, the earth swallowed 
them." f We should see the old promise 
prolific of new results. '^ Thou in thy 
mercy hast led the people which thou hast 
redeemed : thou hast guided them in thy 
strength to thy holy habitation. ":j: Their 
confidence in God opened their eyes to the 
trembling nations round about them. 
*' The peoples have heard, they tremble." § 
Philistines, Edomites, Moabites, and Ca- 
naanites, ^* Terror and dread falleth upon 
them ; by the greatness of thine arm they 
are as still as a stone." || '^ God will bring 
his people into their inheritance." '' The 
Lord shall reign for ever and ever." ^ For 
one blissful moment Israel stands attent, 

* Exod. XV, 6. f Exod. xv, ii, 12. ^ Exod. xv, 13. 
§ Exod. XV, 14. II Exod. xv, 16. T[ Exod. xv, iS. 



60 Christianity and the Christ. 

his thought true, his emotions just, his 
purpose righteous. 

If we remember that the purpose of a 
revelation and the mission of a prophet is 
to teach men how to think about God, 
how to feel and to act toward God, we see 
that the sublime purposes of a revelation 
are going steadily forward in the history 
now before us. Israel is learning this les- 
son for himself and for the race. The 
spirit which wrought in the mind of the 
greater prophets is doing his work effect- 
ively and surely. This sublime song will 
never be forgotten. It echoes and reechoes 
in psalm and prophecy ; its triumphal notes 
roll down through all the centuries ; it has 
been an unfailing source of confidence and 
courage to every generation of believers 
since that time. It was to Israel's thought 
and feeling what the redemption of Christ 
is to our religious consciousness."^ 

The effect thus produced was deepened 
and strengthened by the giving of the law 

* Riehm's Messianic Prophecy, p. 69. 



Christ and the Prophets. 61 

at Sinai and by the preparation for that 
event. The march to Sinai up through 
the '^ great and terrible wilderness,'* the 
silence of the desert, the mysterious forms 
of nature as ** they advance deeper and 
deeper into the mountain ranges, they 
know not whither,*' must have been im- 
pressive. ^* Onwards they went, and the 
mountains closed around them ; upwards 
through winding valley, and under high 
cliff, and over rugged pass, and through 
gigantic forms, on which the marks of cre- 
ation even now seem fresh and powerful," 
until at last they find themselves assembled 
in the presence of that massive cliff which 
rises abruptly out of the plain. They were 
charged by Moses to make elaborate spir- 
itual preparation ; were warned off from 
the mountain altar under penalty of death ; 
there they stood waiting the sublime com- 
munication under the most awe-inspiring 
circumstances conceivable.*^ If the prepa- 

* See Stanley's History of the Jeivish Church, vol. i, 
p. 165. 



62 Christianity and the Christ. 

ration and the surroundings were impress- 
ive, the communication was certainly glo- 
rious. 

Ifthedeliverancefrom Egypt emphasized 
and deepened the sense of God's love and 
mercy to them, that revelation at Sinai 
made dreadful his name as a God great 
and terrible. How shall they dare to put 
idols into competition with the divine Maj- 
esty that spake from Sinai ? Lay bare the 
working of the religious consciousness 
again, and you will find that Sinaitic law 
working there, a barrier against ever-im- 
pending heathenism with its ever-disinte- 
grating idolatry, and a bulwark against injus- 
tice and wrong between man and man. If 
we would know how deep that revelation cut 
its way into the bed rock of theirnational life 
we may read it in all the later history. That 
which is so often repeated by psalmist and 
prophet the New Testament takes up and 
reiterates : '* For ye are not come unto a 
mount that miglit be touched, and that 
burned with fire, and unto blackness, and 



Christ and the Prophets. 63 

darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a 
trumpet, and the voice of words ; which 
voice they that heard entreated that no 
word more should be spoken unto them : 
for they could not endure that which was 
enjoined. If even a beast touch the moun- 
tain, it shall be stoned ; and so fearful was 
the appearance, that Moses said, I exceed- 
ingly fear and quake." '^ That revelation 
has gone out into all the earth, and its mes- 
sage can never be forgotten : ** Jehovah is 
God, and all the gods of the heathen are van- 
ity.'* In the background of the long history 
stands out that terrible mount which lifts its 
head like a veritable Matterhorn into the 
heavens. And, whether black with clouds 
and tempest or shot through with evening 
sunset and brilliant as a throne of sapphire, 
the voice of God is always audible there, 
commanding men off from sinand on toward 
holiness. The hand of God is upon Israel ; 
the covenant is fixed and dominant ; the 
revelation moves and the hope grows. Is- 

*Tleb. xii, 18-21. 



64 Christianity and the Christ. 

rael is learning how to think about God, 
how to feel and act toward God, and what 
to expect from God. The growth of this 
religious consciousness is the growth of 
revelation. 

The next important step is the settle- 
ment of Israel in the promised land. Up 
to this time the hope of Israel has worked 
in a somewhat sporadic way. The years 
just past have organized the people into a 
nation, and now, settled upon their own 
national domain, the religious hope is to 
work its way with ampler opportunity 
through great national institutions. The 
prophet is still and always the center of 
that hope. He is limited by the spiritual 
condition of the time in which he works ; 
he is always a preacher of righteousness to 
his own time; but he is the divinely illumi- 
nated man, and the goal is ever before 
him. A study of this period would show 
that the driving out of the Canaanites was 
necessary for the development of Israel's 
hope. Even with this conquest under- 



Christ and the Prophets. 65 

taken and partially successful, idolatry and 
intermarriage well-nigh swamped the hope 
of Israel more than once. Such a study 
would show that the development of forms 
of worship produced a religious culture, 
and helped to root and spread religious 
ideas ; that the civil institutions which grew 
up mitigated the evils of the time (blood re- 
venge, slavery, and polygamy), and that the 
great religious festivals sent the blood of 
the new hope back with the people to the 
remotest corners of the little theocracy ; 
that the prophets and the prophetic schools 
kept the public conscience alive, the public 
thought uneasy over the defections of Is- 
rael ; and that with the thunderbolts of 
Jehovah's wrath and the portrayal of Is- 
rael's hope they kept the soul of the age 
vibrating to the old Abrahamic promise : 
'' In thee shall all the families of the earth 
be blessed."'^ But these lines of thought 
we can only suggest. God is present in 
Israel's life, the prophet holds firmly the 

* Gen. xii, 3. 



66 Christianity and the Christ. 

principles of life, and keeps the ideal goal 
in view. He is learning and the people 
are learning how to think about God, how 
to feel and act toward God. 

The next epoch is the founding of the 
monarchy under Samuel. He was both 
prophet and judge. But now another 
principle, and one that works in all ad- 
vancing civilizations, appears, namely, the 
principle of the division of labor. In the 
time of early settlements in the West a 
man might be preacher, doctor, teacher, 
farmer, and blacksmith all at the same 
time. He must do everything for himself 
and his family, for the reason that there 
are none to assume the various duties of 
society. But this necessity always indicates 
an undeveloped type of life. As the com- 
munity advances the several functions of 
society are assumed by different individuals. 
Israel is advancing into a more complex, a 
richer and larger life ; is to have the re- 
sponsibilities of increased wealth ; to foster 
many and varied industries ; to be brought 



Christ and the Prophets. 67 

into relations with surrounding nations 
and be greatly influenced by their life ; is 
to have more comforts and refinements; 
and it is God's purpose to use this richer 
and more varied life in the interest of his 
kingdom. Israel goes from the quiet of 
the farm to the noise and stir of the city 
life, with its manifold and inevitable perils 
and its larger possibilities. The transi- 
tion is to be made under the monarchy 
and by the king. Samuel complains that 
the people have rejected him, and Jeho- 
vah says they have rejected Him ; but, 
strange as it may seem, He instructs Samuel 
to grant their request and consecrate them 
a king. This only makes more clear the 
method and the necessity of working out 
the redemption of man through men. 
This whole period is full of lessons to the 
student, and illustrates on a large scale 
how the spirit of God, working upon the 
mind of the prophet, took up all the ideas 
suggested by the larger life and utilized 
them to set forth God's ways among 



68 Christianity and the Christ. 

men ; to break up the old narrow and 
immoral ideas of earlier times ; to develop 
true ideas of man ; to foster a true view 
of the relation of Israel to other nations, 
and of Israel's religion to other religions; 
to teach men how to think about God and 
how to act and feel toward God. This is 
the heart of revelation, and along all these 
lines and many kindred lines of thought 
the revelation moves forward through the 
centuries toward Him in whom all the 
centuries find their meaning. 

A few illustrations of the changes that 
are going on in ideas and ideals will make 
clear the essential lines of progress. 

In the earlier periods of Israel's history 
there was a lack of moral quality in the 
prevalent moral standards. In the time 
of the Judges the standards of relation 
between man and his fellow-men, espe- 
cially between Israel and outside nations, 
can hardly be called moral at all. The 
Book of Judges is one long bloody record 
of crime, savagely brutal and brutally in- 



Christ and the Prophets. 69 

human. Ehud, that left-handed Benjamite, 
with his two-edged sword concealed, ob- 
tains audience with Eglon, king of the 
Moabites, offers him a present, and buries 
the deadly weapon, haft and all, in the 
vitals of the king. Then Israel is sum- 
moned to the fords of the Jordan, and 
there they smite of the Moabites *^ about 
ten thousand men, every lusty man, and 
every man of valor ; and there escaped 
not a man."^ Jael, the wife of Heber, in- 
vites the fleeing Sisera to her hospitable 
home, hides him under a rug, gives him 
water and milk to drink, and then drives 
the tent-pin with swinging hammer and 
joyful heart clear through the royal head, 
** and so he died." 

And Deborah sings her jubilant song : 

Blessed above woman shall Jael be, 

The wife of Heber the Kenite, 

Blessed shall she be above women in the tent. 

He asked water, and she gave him milk ; 

She brought him butter in a lordly dish. 

She put her hand to the nail, 

And her right hand to the workmen's hammer ; 

* Judg. iii, 29. 



70 Christianity and the Christ. 

And with the hammer sh^ smote Sisera, she smote 

through his head, 
Yea, she pierced and struck through his temples. 
At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay : 
At her feet he bowed, he fell : 
Where he bowed, there he fell down dead.^ 

And still she sings of the desolation 
that came to the mother of Sisera, waiting 
and watching, listening for the rumbling of 
his chariot wheels : 

Through the window she looked forth, and cried, 

The mother of Sisera cried through the lattice, 

Why is his chariot so long in coming ? 

Why tarry the wheels of his chariots ? 

Her wise ladies answered her, 

Yea, she returned answer to herself. 

Have they not found, have they not divided the spoil ? 

A damsel, two damsels to every man ; 

To Sisera a spoil of divers colors, 

A spoil of divers colors of embroidery, 

Of divers colors of embroidery on both sides, on the 

necks of the spoil ? 
So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord : 
But let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth 

forth in his might. 
And the land had rest forty years, f 

All ethical relations are conceived in a 
low, savage way, even by the chosen peo- 
ple. They seemed, however, to have one 

* Judg. V, 24-27. t J^^^S- '^' 28-31. 



Christ and the Prophets. 71 

saving merit: they knew that Jehovah 
was God, that his enemies must perish, 
and they fought out their faith according 
to the code of war which obtained at the 
time. The instances given afford the 
most striking illustration of the lack of 
knowledge of morals. But there must be 
a preparation in ideas if Christ is to get a 
hearing for his teaching. A preacher of 
the Sermon on the Mount would have been 
treated in that age to the gospel of Jael's 
tent-pin, or to Ehud's left-handed gospel 
which glittered concealed and restless 
under his cloak. 

This limitation of moral obligations, 
which could tolerate such barbarity, is 
gradually overcome ; the progress is very 
slow, but we do reach a time when, 
according to Isaiah, the nations are to 
'* beat their swords into plowshares, and 
their spears into pruning hooks: nation 
shall not lift up sword against nation, nei- 
ther shall they learn war any more." ^ 

* Isa. ii, 4. 



72 Christianity and the Christ. 

In that view a new ethical principle obtains, 
and one which, widely propagated, pre- 
pares the way for the teaching of Him who 
is a brother to every man, and who has 
made all men brethren. 

The ideas of righteousness were external 
and inadequate. We may see evidence of 
this externality in the promises and curses 
recorded in Deut. xxviii. The rewards 
and penalties are all external. This was a 
necessity and served a wise purpose ; but 
it is still a fact that the deeper root and 
meaning of righteousness was little ap- 
preciated. This fact is made evident, not 
only by the dreadfuT deeds approved, but 
also by the drift into empty ceremonialism ; 
by the substitution of sacrifices for heart 
service, the blood of bulls and goats for 
obedience. These ideas of righteousness 
must be changed if Christ's ideas are to 
prevail. That they are displaced by ideas 
which set forth human relations as they 
ought to exist is made clear by the later 
prophets. Amos's indictment of Israel 



Christ and the Prophets. 73 

comes from the heights: ** Shall not the 
day of the Lord be darkness, and not 
light ? even very dark, and no brightness 
in it ? I hate, I despise your feasts, and I 
will take no delight in your solemn assem- 
blies. Yea, though ye offer me your burnt 
offerings and meal offerings, I will not 
accept them : neither will I regard the 
peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take 
thou away from me the noise of thy 
songs ; for I will not hear the melody 
of thy viols. But let judgment roll down 
as waters, and righteousness as a mighty 
stream." "^ 

Amos understands perfectly that right- 
eousness is an inward condition of the 
heart. There can be no acceptable sacri- 
fice that discounts right conduct. Christ 
can build on the truths taught by Amos 
and fulfill the expectations and hopes 
rooted in those ideas and propagated by 
him and his coadjutors. A new con- 
sciousness is stirring among the prophets of 

* Amos V, 20-24. 



74 Christianity and the Christ. 

this time, a consciousness luminous with 
the deepest ethical principles. 

In the earlier history of Israel the indi- 
vidual is swallowed up in the nation. That 
this was an important and necessary pro- 
vision in the development of Israel's life 
is quite clear ; but that it resulted, on the 
other hand, in low and false estimates of the 
individual, and in false estimates of the 
nature of holiness, is made quite evident 
both in the Old and New Testament Scrip- 
tures. The Jews of Christ's time, who 
seemed to think it was enough to be able 
to say, ^* We have Abraham to our father," 
illustrate this misconception, and the lack 
of balance between the individual and 
the people. Holiness is a characteristic of 
persons, and not of nations, except as the 
persons that compose the nation are holy. 
Holiness is an attitude of mind, a condi- 
tion of heart, a bearing of the will. If 
these are antagonistic to God, there is no 
possible way of thinking such a man holy. 

But if Christ's idea of righteousness as 



Christ and the Prophets. 75 

we learn it from his life and his Sermon on 
the Mount is ever to get a footing, it is 
quite essential that this older idea should 
be corrected by a truer notion of the per- 
sonal character of holiness. And as we 
look through the eyes of the prophets w^e 
discover the steady advance in this direc- 
tion and hear at length Jeremiah saying: 

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will 
make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with 
the house of Judah : not according to the covenant that 
I made with their fathers in the day that I took them 
by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt ; 
which my covenant they brake, although I was an hus- 
band unto them, saith the Lord. But this is the cove- 
nant that I will make with the house of Israel after 
those days, saith the Lord ; I will put my law in their 
inward parts, and in their heart will I write it ; and I 
will be their God, and they shall be my people : and 
they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and 
every man his brother, saying. Know the Lord: for they 
shall all know me, from the least of them unto the 
greatest of them, saith the Lord : for I will forgive their 
iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more.* 

This language of Jeremiah carries us to 
that inward view of righteousness which 
is so startlingly set forth by Christ in the 

*Jer. xxxi, 31-34. 



76 Christianity and the Christ. 

Sermon on the Mount, and shows us an- 
other Hne of progress toward the Messiah. 
Another illustration of this progress is 
in the advance toward a true universalism. 
We have certain prolific phases of this 
preparation in the clearer recognition of 
holiness as a personal matter. If holiness 
were a form of service to be rendered at a 
given time and place, whether at Jerusa- 
lem or any other holy city ; if it were a 
condition of soul for which the Jew is pe- 
culiarly qualified and the Gentile peculiarly 
disqualified, then there could be no univer- 
sal Gospel. This misapprehension is abun- 
dantly illustrated in Israel's history, and 
is the prevalent doctrine among many 
of the best and wisest of the heathen 
philosophers. But progress in the 
knowledge of God is always accom- 
panied by progress in the knowledge of 
man. Man as created in the image of God 
is a person, a moral being, with intellect, 
moral emotions, and will, capable of a 
freely chosen, self-directed life. This an- 



Christ and the Prophets. 77 

cient germ of anthropology, which teaches 
that man was made in the image of God, 
is great both with evolution and revolu- 
tion. To stand thus for God is to stand 
with capacities for moral action, with du- 
ties corresponding thereto, and the social 
environment must be turned and over- 
turned until it fits and fosters this high 
destiny. That the moral principles widely 
cherished in Israel's earlier history are 
very far from this conception of man which 
makes a universal^ gospel possible is evi- 
dent. Let us try to sum up the content 
of this chapter, and make clear what we 
have gained. We have seen the promise 
made to Abraham, rooted and fixed in the 
national life by two great events, namely ,the 
deliverance from Egypt and the giving of 
the law at Sinai. We have seen the set- 
tlement of Canaan and the organization of 
the monarchy, and under these new condi- 
tions the many-sided national life unfolded, 
and as the central figure and factor in this 
life we have seen the prophet. What has 



78 Christiamtv and the Christ. 

he done? He has changed the unethical 
standards of the time of the Judges into 
the true ethical principles of the time of 
Isaiah and his coadjutors : he has changed 
the conception of holiness as an external 
thing to the conception of holiness as a con- 
dition of the inner man : he has shown that 
holiness is personal and not natural ; he 
has made the hope of the Israelite a hope 
for the race. 

Stirred by contact with the nations of 
the earth, weeping at times over impend- 
ing doom, hurling the thunderbolts of 
Jehovah's wrath upon the sacrilegious ma- 
rauder, cursing the disturbers of Israel's 
peace, never forgetting the chastisements 
which Israel deserves, meting them out in 
full measure upon recreant king and aban- 
doned idolater, the prophet, illuminated 
from on high, is ever rising on faith's broad 
wing out of the darkness of a hopeless 
present to the loftiest summits of vision. 
He sees the dividing lines among the na- 
tions fading away, and sweeps the whole 



Christ and the Prophets. 79 

earthly horizon in that sublime universal- 
ism, the blessing of Abraham, a blessing 
for all men. Isaiah's soul burns with gos- 
pel grace while he sings : 

And it shall come to pass in the latter days, that the 
mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the 
top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the 
hills ; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many peo- 
ples shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the 
mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob ; 
and he will teach us of his ways, and wq will walk in his 
paths : for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the 
word of the Lord from Jerusalem.* 

Again Isaiah represents the servant of 
Jehovah as sprinkling many nations, as 
given for a witness to the peoples, ** a 
leader and commander to the peoples." 
Jehovah delights in him. His spirit is 
upon him. ** He shall bring forth judg- 
ment to the Gentiles." ^' He shall not fail 
or be discouraged, till he have set judg- 
ment in the earth ; and the isles shall wait 
for his law.'* 

Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heavens, 
and stretched them forth ; he that spread abroad the 
earth and that which cometh out of it ; he that giveth 

* Isa. ii, 2, 3. 



80 Christianity and the Christ. 

breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that 
walk therein : I, the Lord have called thee in righteous- 
ness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and 
give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the 
Gentiles ; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the pris- 
oners from the dungeon, and them that sit in darkness 
out of the prison house.* 

In the inspired thought of the prophets 
the Abrahamic hope has worked itself free 
from all national limitations, and the true 
universalism of the promise appears. 

And now, from the height we have 
gained, we are prepared to see the full 
meaning of those marvelous predictive ut- 
terances which shine along the centuries 
like stars in the night. Consider the prom- 
ise made to Abraham, '' In thee shall 
all the families of the earth be blessed/* 
Think of the vision of Balaam, son of Beor, 
that heathen seer who could not curse 
Israel : 

He saith, which heareth the words of God, 
And knoweth the knowledge of the Most High, 
Which seeth the vision of the Almighty, 
Falling down, and having his eyes open : 
I see him, but not now : 

* Isa. xlii, 5-7. 



Christ and the Prophets. 81 

I behold him, but not nigh : 
There shall come forth a star out of Jacob, 
And a scepter shall rise out of Israel, 
And shall smite through the corners of Moab, 
And break down all the sons of tumult. 
And Edom shall be a possession, 
Seir also shall be a possession, which were his ene- 
mies ; 
While Israel doeth valiantly. 
And out of Jacob shall one have dominion, 
And shall destroy the remnant from the city.* 

Recall the coming prophet of whom 
Moses speaks, and whom Israel shall hear. 

The Messianic hope early becomes at- 
tached to the tribe of Judah. The prophet 
Micah with startling definiteness points out 
the birthplace of the coming ruler: "But 
thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, which art little 
to be among the thousands of Judah, out 
of thee shall one come forth unto me that 
is to be ruler in Israel ; whose goings 
forth are from of old, from everlast- 
ing." f The Book of Ruth gives us *' the 
original history of the Bethlehemitic fam- 
ily from which David came," and seems 
to have been written to preserve the 

* Num. xxiv, i6-i(j. f Micah v, 2. 

6 



82 Christianity and the Christ. 

origin of that going forth of which Mi- 
cah speaks. The national hope became 
attached to David's family (as recorded in 
2 Sam. vii, i Chron. xvii) when he pro- 
posed to build a house for the Lord. He 
was forbidden to do this by the prophet 
Nathan, but was assured of ^^ an everlasting 
hereditary possession of the throne under 
God's fatherly protection." The psalmist 
sees the nations arrayed against this com- 
ing king, but Jehovah holds them in deri- 
sion and says : 

Yet I have set my king 
Upon my holy hill of Zion. 

I will tell of the decree : 
The Lord said unto me, Thou art my son ; 
This day have I begotten thee. 

Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine in- 
heritance. 
And the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.* 

Isaiah portrays in most sublime language 
the majestic character of the king and the 
permanence of the kingdom when he writes: 

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given ; 
and the government shall be upon his shoulder : and his 
* Psalm ii, 6-8. 



Christ and the Prophets. 83 

name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, IMighty 
God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the in- 
crease of his government and of peace there shall be no 
end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, 
to establish it, and to uphold it with judgment and with 
righteousness from henceforth even forever. The zeal 
of the Lord of Hosts shall perform this.* 

What shall we make of all these predic- 
tions ? Had these predictions been left iso- 
lated sayings we should hardly have been 
able to find their meaning. But they are a 
part of a system of thought and a method 
of revelation which run through long centu- 
ries and work in the life of a whole nation. 
They are, therefore, to be interpreted in 
relation to that life and that revelation. 
While we must be on our guard not to put 
into the mind of the writer or speaker what 
was not in his mind — the first duty of an 
interpreter is to discover the mind of the 
writer — we must also be on our guard lest 
we be hypercritical and eliminate from the 
record the divine thought that is made 
evident by the course and outcome of his- 

* Isa. ix, 6, 7. 



84 Christianity and the Christ. 

tory. History reveals the thought of God 
as the prophets themselves did not under- 
stand it. As a matter of fact there is more 
of divine guidance than of human foresight 
in the life of Israel ; there is a larger and 
richer purpose than was ever dreamed of 
even by the most favored prophet. 

There is little space left to consider the 
most remarkable passage in all the pro- 
phetic literature, namely, the passage found 
in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, where 
he portrays the suffering servant of Jeho- 
vah. The purpose of God has been at 
work in the nation, and has fixed itself 
with perfect definiteness in an ideal king, 
a king that shall rule in righteousness and 
rule eternally. Under the inspiration of 
the divine Spirit the prophetic mind has 
wrought upon the character of this king 
from the time of Samuel. He has been 
steadily lifted above the individual kings 
of the house of David, and the beneficence 
of his reign has been extended beyond the 
national horizon until it covers the whole 



Christ and the Prophets. 85 

earth. Indeed, the nation that will not 
serve him must perish. 

But there is another Hne of development 
that has to do with this king conceived as 
the suffering servant of JeJwvah, All the 
sacrificial ceremonies are developed on the 
principle of mediation. The sacrificial lit- 
erature expresses that principle in a variety 
of ways. The sins of the people are con- 
fessed on the head of the scapegoat, as 
though sin could be carried over from the 
guilty soul to the dumb and innocent 
creature ; and then, by the hands of a trusty 
man, this dumb beast is led away into an 
unknown land. This is the dramatized 
form of the doctrine of atonement in its 
practical outcome. The whole people 
came to feel that sin could be put away. 
The mind of the prophet is often engaged 
with this profound theme. The problem 
has been to unite the various phases of 
truth that have hitherto run on quite inde- 
pendent of each other. Mow shall the 
prophet unite the sacrificial side of his s\s- 



86 Christiaxity and the Christ. 

tern with its regal side? How shall he 
unite the conception of the siifferiiig serv- 
ant of Jehovah, in whom the whole import 
of the sacrificial system is summed up, 
with the idea of Him whose name is called 
" Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God," 
with him upon whose shoulders rests the 
government of this eternal kingdom ? Up 
to the time of Isaiah the prophet seems 
never to have been able to bring together 
the many-sided truth in one all-compre- 
hensive concept. In the fifty-third chapter 
of Isaiah the prophet at last grasps the 
whole content of prophecy by the root. 
All other prophetic truth starts from it, 
and from it springs anew the rejuvenated 
hope of Israel. As we find the servant of 
Jehovah described in chapters xl-xlviii, 
it is clear that the prophet has the whole 
nation in mind. But when we come to 
that section of prophecy included in chap- 
ters xlix and liii the prophet has nar- 
rowed his conception ; the servant of Je- 
hovah is no longer the whole nation, but 



Christ and the Prophets. 87 

the '^ faithful remnant/' that part of the na- 
tion that has remained uncontaminated by 
the environment of a foreign land. Through 
this remnant restoration is to be wrought 
out, atonement provided, and Israel is to 
become the bearer of blessings to the world. 
But the prophet seems ever on the 
point of breaking through this idea of the 
remnant ; the bold personification of the 
idea is so vivid, the radical contrast of the 
actual condition of Israel with the assured 
ideal condition is so striking, that the 
reader almost expects, as he reads, to hear 
the name of this servant announced, by 
whom Jehovah will realize the ideal. It 
is not announced, but his character is so 
clearly portrayed, his origin, rejection, 
humiliation, suffering, trial and condem- 
nation, death and burial, and the victory 
tliat shall come out of his death are so 
vividly described, that one can almost see 
the inscription above the cross : '' This is 
Jesus the King of the Jew s." '''* The sacri- 

* Afalt. xxvii, 37. 



88 Christianity and the Christ. 

ficial types have at last found their mean- 
ing. The scattered rays of Hght converge 
in the cross of Christ. There is foresight 
here that neither wisest sage nor inspired 
prophet ever fully mastered. 

One can but feel the solemn music of 
these stately days of Israel's history. The 
master prophet now sits at the great or- 
gan and feels his way up toward the 
sublime theme. He has given us in low 
and plaintive prelude the Lord's charge 
against Israel: *^ I have nourished and 
brought up children, and they have re- 
belled against me." ^ He has comforted 
Israel with the mellow music of God's un- 
failing grace ;f he has set the wrath of 
God ablaze in weird tones that smell of 
conflagration ; :{: a few thrilling trumpet- 
blasts have been sent echoing over the 
deserts against hostile Babylon, Assyria, 
Philistia, Egypt, and Moab ; § and ever 
and anon, in the midst of this reveling 
chaos of wild music, you catch recurrent 

* Isa. i, 2. f Isa. iv. \ Isa. v, 24. § Isa. xiii-xxiii. 



Christ and the Prophets. S9 

notes pure and clear as an angel's voice. "^ 
Is it an angeFs song? 

The musician feels his theme ; the 
mighty music has taken possession of the 
man, and on the floodtide of his ocean- 
deep diapasons he carries you down, 
down, into the deep darkness, with him 
who was ** smitten of God and afflicted,'* 
*^ bruised for our iniquities," ^* oppressed," 
and **dumb/* cut off for our transgres- 
sions ; with him who ^^ poured out his 
soul an offering for sin." The tragic music 
rolls its pathetic impassioned minor down 
and on ; the servant of Jehovah, the hope 
of Israel, lies buried, ^* his grave with the 
wicked and with the rich in his death." 
We are lost in the gloom. But the musi- 
cian is not lost. The processes of life eter- 
nal are stirring in that grave. He touches 
the organ again. A note of triumph re- 
sponds, '' He divides the spoil with the 
strong." Even now the conquered is a 
conqueror. There is the tramp of armies 

* Isa. xxii. 



90 Christianity and the Christ. 

in the trumpet-tones which summon Is- 
rael to sing ; to '' break forth into sing- 
ing ; " to spread abroad and possess the 
nations ; to behold them gathered with 
their wealth and glory unto Israel's king; 
for, says the prophet, '^ the glory of the 
Lord is risen upon thee ; *' '' the Lord 
shall be thine everlasting light, and the 
days of thy mourning shall be ended." "^ 

When Isaiah has completed his work, 
there is little to be added to give us 
the living picture of the Messiah. We 
only need the touch of the evangelists to 
add a little more color to the cheek, to 
kindle a little more light in the eye, and 
to sound for us the quality of that match- 
less voice, and we have before us the Son 
of man, the Son of God. And as we stand 
among the men of his time we feel the 
trembling expectation alive in every heart. 
Rome felt it. The Magi felt it in the far 
East. All Judaism felt it. Whence comes 
this long-expected one? Standing with 

* See Isa. liii and liv. 



Christ and the Prophets. 91 

him at the cross we can easily see the line of 
light from the star which Balaam saw, re- 
flected in the star which led the Magi 
to the Babe in Bethlehem, and we do not 
wonder that the angels sang, ^* Glory to God 
in the highest, and on earth peace." This 
wonderful movement in the life of a 
whole nation extending over a period of 
eighteen centuries; this advance from the 
lowest ethical standards to the highest, 
from the conception of righteousness as 
external and national to a conception of 
it as internal and personal ; this movement 
which breaks all national barriers and be- 
comes a revelation of hope for all men, has 
one rational explanation. It is found in 
the language of Jesus of Nazareth : ^^ Be- 
fore Abraham was I am." In order to get 
its bearing upon our subject we need to 
ask in the light of it. Is our faith in Jesus 
rational? 



92 Christianity and the Christ. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CHRIST AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 

'T^HAT Jesus wrought miracles we are 
-*- assured by the constant testimony of 
the four evangeHsts and by the testimony 
of Paul the apostle. This evidence is a 
stumbling-block to all those that deny the 
supernatural. Paulus denies it, but is 
obliged to acknowledge that his followers 
thougJit he worked miracles, Renan denies 
it, and is obliged to assume that he pre- 
tended to work miracles, but did it unwill- 
ingly and almost petulantly. 

Strauss denies it, and seeks to cut his 
way out of the difficulty by assuming that 
the records we have were written at some 
time far down in the second century, and 
that the miraculous phases of the records 
are ^' embellishments " added between the 
lifetime of Jesus and the date of that 



Christ and the Supernatural. 93 

writing. And since, according to his view, 
the eyewitnesses could not have been de- 
ceived, we must infer that these additions 
were made after the eyewitnesses had 
passed away. But the progress of criticism 
has tended steadily to show that the gos- 
pels were written in the first century. 
That question we need not discuss, as we 
have the incontrovertible testimony of 
Paul in his four universally accepted epis- 
tles, to the gist of the whole matter. He 
assumes to have worked miracles himself, 
and also assumes that it is a matter not 
in debate in the churches to which he 
writes. 

Hume denies the supernatural, and 
claims that universal experience is against 
the truth of miracles. The whole case is 
summed up by Strauss, and we will give 
his words. 

He affirms that a gospel narrative can- 
not be regarded as historical ^* when the 
narrative is irreconcilable with the known 
and universal laws which govern the course 



94 Christianity and the Christ. 

of events ; " and in elaboration of this cri- 
terion he says: ** When therefore we meet 
with an account of certain phenomena or 
events of which it is either expressly stated 
or implied that they were produced immedi- 
ately by God himself (divine apparitions, 
voices from heaven and the like), or by 
human beings possessed of supernatural 
powers (miracles, prophecies), such an ac- 
count is in so far to be considered as not 
historical." ^ This is the position fairly 
stated of both Paulus and Renan, and, in- 
deed, the implication of all those that con- 
trovert the gospel narrative at this point. 

There are certain general considerations 
relative to the supernatural which will 
serve to set the whole subject in a true 
light. It is the purpose of the present 
chapter to give the subject as it appears in 
the New Testament its true setting. And 
in the first place we may ask, What is 
meant by the supernatural or the mirac- 
ulous ? 

* See Life of Jesus, vol. i, p. 71. 



Christ and the Supernatural. 95 

If we fix our thought upon some one 
New Testament miracle and explain it, 
we shall get the clearest idea of the 
subject. Take the case of blind Barti- 
maeus, as recorded in Mark x, 46-52. In 
answer to Jesus's question, ^* What wilt 
thou that I should do unto thee?'* the" 
blind beggar prays, '^ Rabboni, that I may 
receive my sight." And Jesus said unto 
him, ^^ Go thy way ; thy faith hath made 
thee whole. And straightway he received 
his sight, and followed him in the way." 
This is a miracle for the reason that it 
compels us to believe that the agency of 
God is involved in an extraordinary way. 
When then the Almighty departs from 
his ordinary course of action in the realm 
of nature, by which he makes its laws con- 
tinuous, to do a unique thing, since we 
cannot explain the event by referring it 
to the causes that work in nature, we refer 
it to the immediate act of the Almighty. 
Whether, then, we speak of miracles or of 
supernatural events, wc mean such events 



96 Christianity and the Christ. 

as point to a unique act of the Almighty 
and an act which we are forced to beheve 
is in the interest of the revelation of his 
character and purposes to man. 

The question has been raised whether 
miracles are necessary to a revelation. 
That men may come to believe in God 
apart from miracles is by no means impos- 
sible. The character of Jesus and his ethical 
teaching may provide a reasonable ground 
for faith. But that the belief in miracles 
has served a very important purpose is cer- 
tain ; we know what the effect of this belief 
was upon Israel. It is doubtful if Christ 
would have gotten a hearing at all had he 
not at least seemed to meet the expecta- 
tions that the prophets had created con- 
cerning the Messiah. They had been 
teaching that the Messiah would work mir- 
acles. The people expected this evidence 
of his Messiahship and were constantly ask- 
ing for it. Suppose he had not pretended 
to meet that demand, w^hat would have 
been the effect upon their faith ? Miracles 



Christ and the Supernatural. 97 

have an important function to-day. There 
IS a disposition on the part of many stu- 
dents of nature to explain everything under 
the law of miechanism. Many go so far as 
to substitute law for love and power for 
personality as the ultimate ground of all 
things. They make the ^' promise and 
potency'* of matter responsible for every 
event in the history of the whole cosmic 
movement and in the history of the race 
as well. 

We know that this theory breaks down 
when applied to man. We know that we 
are responsible. By analogy we are led to 
predicate some such free power back of the 
events of history, and of the cosmic order. 
But once establish a miraculous event like 
that of healing blind Bartimaeus, and the 
theory of an all-embracing mechanical 
scheme which swallows up and is responsi- 
ble for every event in history, whether of 
the world, the race, or the individual, is 
shattered. Miracles help us on beyond 
cosmic order to God. Supernatural events 



98 Christianity and the Christ. 

serve to open spiritual vision. Paul saw 
more while he was blind than Saul with 
open eyes. 

We need to be on our guard against 
another misunderstanding and vitiating 
assumption. It is not necessary to assume 
that violence is done to nature's laws in 
order to reach a supernatural result. Man, 
by the power of his free will, is constantly 
coming down upon nature and carrying 
her on to ends she never could have 
reached. Nature never invented a tele- 
phone or a steam engine. Man did her 
no violence when he achieved these results. 
The exercise of our own free power is a 
perpetual illustration of the probable 
method of the supernatural in its relation 
to the world of nature, and balks at once 
the objector who talks loudly of'* violence.*' 

With these cautionary words against 
misunderstandings we may now add that 
it is necessary to see these supernatural 
events in relation to the system of philos- 
ophy and history to which they belong. 



Christ and the Supernatural. 99 

Every interpretation of a Scripture text by 
the process of isolation is a misinterpreta- 
tion. The meaning of every text is deter- 
mined by its context. It carries in its 
soul the time, the place, the speaker, and 
the whole environment. Abraham Lincoln 
cannot be understood in isolation. He 
must be set down in Springfield, 111., and 
carried through the great war ; or, better 
still, must be seen in the log cabin of his boy- 
hood, followed through his whole career to 
his, grave ; must be seen in the light of his- 
tory yet to be made. The competency of a 
witness is not to be determined by isolating 
him ; that would be both false and fatal. A 
general does not usually allow the enemy 
to take his men out man by man and shoot 
them down at his leisure. The supernatural 
events of the New Testament belong to a 
system of philosophy. They are not con- 
sistent with any form of materialism or 
pantheism. They go well with the theory 
that there is a God and that this world 
and all its activities are dependent upon 



100 Christianity and the Christ. 

him. There is no rational theory of the 
universe that can shut out from its forces 
or its laws the fundamental power or 
being upon whom the universe depends. 
If this power be only power, it still works 
in the vast all, in every deed and emotion, 
word and volition. If it be the eternal 
God, nature and history must express his 
ideas and work his will. He can modify 
either force or action, fact or law. 

The teaching of modern philosophy, on 
God's relation to the world, is intimately 
related to this subject. It has often, if not 
always, been the case that the denier of 
miracles has been tainted either with a 
deistic philosophy, which puts God far 
away from the universe and creates a kind 
of presupposition that he would not come 
down to interfere in the affairs of this 
world, or with a pantheistic philosophy, by 
which the freedom of God is compromised 
and God himself is under the sweep and do- 
minion of an all-engulfing mechanism. But 
if man be free and responsible the latter 



Christ and the Supernatural. 101 

theory is irrational, and in the Hght of mod- 
ern philosophy the former is improbable. 
There is a wide unanimity of opinion 
among modern philosophers in the doc- 
trine that God is immanent in the universe. 
Herbert Spencer calls the ground of the 
universe ^^ the Unknowable ; " Matthew 
Arnold calls it '^ the power, not ourselves, 
which makes for righteousness." In both 
cases the agent is immanent. 

Paul expresses the gist of modern phi- 
losophy in the following words : '' For in 
him we live, and move, and have our be- 
ing.''"^ And the author of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews writes to the same effect 
when he speaks of Christ as '' upholding all 
things by the word of his power." f If 
God be thus immanent in this world, as 
both Scripture and philosophy teach, and 
if he is carrying history forward to its goal, 
as both evolution and Christianity teach, 
then the question of miracles stands on 
very different ground. Nature is then 

■'^" Acts xvii, 28. f I Id), i, 3. 



102 Christianity and the Christ. 

ahvays the expression of his immanent 
power. He will modify its forces and carry 
them to different results if the end to be 
reached demand such modification. 

The immanence of God in the on-going 
universe robs the improbability of super- 
natural events of half its force, inasmuch 
as that improbability is grounded in Deism 
or Pantheism. 

There are several other phases of this 
setting which claim attention. We know 
that the gospel system is the culmination of 
a long-continued and most extraordinary 
historic movement. Consider how the na- 
tional hope originated and rooted itself 
in the conscious life of Israel ; note the 
tenacity of that hope in spite of bond- 
age, captivity, idolatry, dissension, and 
national disaster ; read the decalogue of 
Moses, and compare it with the ten granite 
ribs which form and support the graceful 
bodyofallmoderncivilization; look through 
the animated eyes of the prophet ; hear the 
world uttering the prayers, making the 



Christ and the Supernatural. 103 

confessions, and singing the triumphant 
songs of David ; and then connect this 
history with Him who was the desire of 
all nations, and we are compelled to see 
that the extraordinary events of the New 
Testament do not stand entirely alone. 
They belong to a system. We know, too, 
the nineteen centuries of history which 
have followed. When seen in the light of 
Israel's hope it, too, is extraordinary. We 
must not allow the objector to carry off 
the facts and bury them one by one, nor 
to draw off the witnesses and shoot them 
down alone. 

Renan tells us that Jesus pretended to 
work miracles, but that he did it unwill- 
ingly. It is true that Jesus would not 
allow a false and exaggerated estimate to 
be put upon miracles ; but unless we are to 
deny the testimony of the witnesses alto- 
gether, on the ground of incompetency, 
we are compelled to admit that Jesus 
wrought many miracles; that he did it 
willingly, and with a purpose. He sends 



104 Christianity and the Christ. 

the messengers from John back with the 
answer: '^ Go your way and tell John the 
things which ye do hear and see : the 
blind receive their sight, and the lame 
walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf 
hear, and the dead are raised up, and the 
poor have good tidings preached to them." "^ 
He condemns the cities of the plain be- 
cause they repented not: **Woe unto 
thee, Chorazin ! Woe unto thee, Beth- 
saida ! for if the mighty works had 
been done in Tyre and Sidon, which were 
done in you, they would have repented 
long ago in sackcloth and ashes. "f The 
miracles of Jesus are so inextricably con- 
nected with his teaching that they cannot 
be separated, They belong to a system of 
truth. 

What is to be said concerning the ability 
of these writers to create such a character 
as that of Jesus of Nazareth? Is this 
masterpiece of the ages, which no Goethe 
or Shakespeare has matched, which is uni- 

^ Matt, xi, 4, 5. f Matt, xi, 21. 



Christ and the Supernatural. 105 

versally conceded to be without flaw, which 
has been the admiration and the despair of 
the ages, the invention of these evangel- 
ists? In answer to this question we may 
observe the impression Jesus has made 
upon some of the great minds of the 
ages. John Stuart Mill writes : *' But who 
among his disciples or among their prose- 
lytes was capable of inventing the sayings 
ascribed to Jesus or of imagining the life 
and character revealed in the gospels? 
Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee ; as 
certainly not St. Paul. . . .Religion can- 
not be said to have made a bad choice in 
pitching upon this man as the ideal repre- 
sentative and guide of humanity. ' ' Strauss 
says that Jesus stands foremost among 
those who have given a higher ideal to 
humanity. Renan writes : ^* This sublime 
person, who each day still presides over 
the destiny of the world, may be called 
divine, not in the sense that Jesus has 
absorbed all the divine, but in the sense 
that Jesus is the person who has impelled 



106 Christianity and the Christ. 

his fellow-men to make the greatest step 
toward the divine." And on the next 
page Renan asks very suggestively : '' Will 
great originality be born again, or will the 
world henceforth content itself by follow- 
ing the paths opened by the bold original 
minds of antiquity? We do not know. 
In any case Jesus wall not be surpassed. 
His worship will constantly renew itself, 
his history will provoke endless pious 
tears, his sufferings will subdue the stout- 
est hearts; all ages will proclaim that 
among the sons of men no one has been 
born greater than Jesus.*' Have our Gali^ 
lean fishermen then outdone Shakespeare, 
and given us a character that has im- 
pressed friend and foe alike, as a character 
altogether exceptional and unique ? Is 
Jean Paul Richter correct when he writes : 
*^ Jesus, the purest among the mighty, the 
mightiest among the pure, with his pierced 
hand raised empires off their hinges, turned 
the stream of the centuries out of its chan- 
nel, and still commands the ages. . . . 



Christ and the Supernatural. 107 

Only one spirit of surpassing power of 
heart stands alone, like the universe, by 
the side of God. For there stepped once 
upon the earth a unique being, who merely 
by the omnipotence of holiness subdued 
strange ages and founded an eternity 
peculiarly his own. Blooming softly, obe- 
dient as the sunflower, yet burning and all- 
attracting as the sun, with his own gentle 
might he moved and directed himself and 
peoples and centuries at the same time 
toward Him who is the original and uni- 
versal Sun. That is the gentle Spirit whom 
we call Jesus Christ. If he really existed 
then there is a Providence, or he himself 
were Providence?'* Richter is altogether 
correct. 

One does not wonder at Paulus, who, 
when accused of regarding Christ as a mere 
man, '* sprang suddenly from his seat and 
replied with great passion and glowing 
eyes, ' That is an unjust statement, whicli 
people are not weary of repeating against 
me ! Believe me, that I never look up to 



108 Christianity and the Christ. 

the Holy One on the cross without sinking 
in deep devotion before him. No; he is 
not a mere man, as other men. He was 
an extraordinary phenomenon, altogether 
peculiar in his character, elevated high 
above the whole human race, to be ad- 
mired ; yea, to be adored ! ' " We come 
back at last to the matchless character 
of the Lord Jesus. It bears upon this 
question of the supernatural in all its 
phases. 

It is evident beyond dispute that these 
Galilean fishermen have surpassed all the 
Raphaels, the Angelos, the Goethes, and 
Shakespeares, for the reason that they saw 
their model, and recorded what they saw. 
The picture is incomparable, a picture of 
transcendent power and beauty. They 
could paint it as they saw it ; they could 
not invent it. But such a unique charac- 
ter may very consistently be possessed of 
altogether unique powers. If we see the 
original witnesses in the places they act- 
ually occupied, and hear them under the 



Christ and the Supernatural. 109 

conditions in which they spoke, we shall 
be rather surprised if they have nothing 
to tell us of words beyond the wisdom 
of men and of deeds beyond the power 
of men. 



110 Christianity and the Christ. 



CHAPTER V. 

CHRIST'S SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 

WE have often heard the ques- 
tion asked, '' What think ye of 
Christ ?" Perhaps we have never definite- 
ly asked ourselves the question : ^' What 
did Christ think of himself? " We know 
the experiences of our own inner life 
from consciousness, but the inner life of 
others by inference from what they do 
and say. In like manner we may get 
at the inner life of Jesus by studying 
his words, his deeds, and his plans. We 
cannot fathom the depths of his nature, 
but from a study of the great outstand- 
ing facts of his life we may, with a good 
degree of assurance, answer the ques- 
tion raised, '' What did Jesus think of 
himself? '' 

No argument can be half so impress- 



Christ's Self-Consciousness. Ill 

ive as that furnished by the New Testa- 
ment narratives themselves. If we turn 
to Matt, xxi we find the following ac- 
count of his triumphal entry into Jeru- 
salem : 

And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and came 
unto Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then Jesus sent 
two disciples, saying unto them. Go into the village that is 
over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass 
tied, and a colt with her : loose them, and bring them 
unto me. And if any one say aught unto you, ye shall 
say, The Lord hath need of them ; and straightway he 
will send them. Now this is come to pass, that it might 
be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, 

Tell ye the daughter of Zion, 

Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, 

Meek, and riding upon an ass. 

And upon a colt the foal of an ass. 
And the disciples went, and did even as Jesus ap- 
pointed them, and brought the ass, and the colt, and put 
on them their garments ; and he sat thereon. And the 
most part of the multitude spread their garments in the 
way ; and others cut branches from the trees, and spread 
them in the way. And the multitudes that went before 
him, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the 
son of David : Blessed is he that cometh in the name of 
the Lord ; Hosanna in the highest. And when he was 
come into Jerusalem, all the city was stirred, saying, 
Wlio is this ? And the multitudes said, This is the 
prophet, Jesus, from Nazareth of dalilee.* 

♦ Matt, xxi, i-ii. 



112 Christianity and the Christ. 

\Vc find the following account of his 
visit to Nazareth and his appearance in the 
synagogue : 

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought 
up : and he entered, as his custom was, into the syna- 
gogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And 
there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet 
Isaiah. And he opened the book, and found the place 
where it was written, 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 

Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to 
the poor : 

He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, 

And recovering of sight to the blind, 

To set at liberty them that are bruised, 

To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. 
And he closed the book, and gave it back to the at- 
tendant, and sat down : and the eyes of all in the syna- 
gogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto 
them. To-day hath this Scripture been fulfilled in your 
ears.* 

What must have been his thought of 
himself as he rode that day in the midst 
of that triumphal procession into Jerusa- 
lem I The accompanying multitude, with 
their palm branches and their ringing 
shouts, *' Hosanna to the Son of David,'* 
show how they understood him. As he 

* Luke iv, 16-21. 



Christ's Self-Consciousness. 113 

stood in the little synagogue at Nazareth 
among his old friends and neighbors and 
declared concerning the lesson from Isaiah, 
'' To-day hath this Scripture been fulfilled 
in your ears," ^ what was his thought ? 

In order to fully appreciate Christ's 
thought of himself in these acts we need 
to remember, first of all, that he had been 
thoroughly trained from his youth in the 
Hebrew Scriptures. They were his only 
Bible. He knew them from Genesis to 
Malachi. His mother early taught him the 
history of the Israelitish people, the cov- 
enant with Abraham and the promise con- 
nected therewith, the bondage in Egypt 
and the deliverance at the Red Sea, and of 
the expectations concerning the coming 
Messianic King. From childhood he had 
sung these Messianic psalms, which portray 
in glowing imagery the prosperity of Israel 
under the Messiah's reign, and the wide ex- 
tent of his dominion over all the nations of 
the earth. His soul had often been thrilled 

^ Luke iv, 21. 
8 



lU Christianity and the Christ. 

with the trumpet-tones of Isaiah : and look- 
ing through the anointed eyes of the rapt 
prophet, he had seen the nations flowing to- 
ward ]\Iount Zion, to learn of Israel's king, 
and to worship in the mountain of the Lord's 
house. He had read of the extension of his 
beneficent reign over the Gentiles and of 
the rich Gentile kings coming bending with 
their gifts unto him. He had brooded over 
the sacrifices, had seen this ^Messianic king 
as the suffering servant of Jehovah, tread- 
ing the wine press alone. We need to mark 
well these facts and perceive clearly their 
implication. We must note further that 
this triumphal role was no accident, it was 
not forced upon him, it was deliberately 
planned. 

The people once thought to take him 
and make him king, but the time was not 
ripe, and he would not permit it. 

But at length the hour came. He sent 
two of his disciples to bring a colt ; he as- 
sured them that if any one objected they 
would only need to say that the Lord 



Christ's Self-Consciousness. 115 

hath need of him. He evidently intended 
that they should understand his act just as 
they did understand it. 

In the other passage to which we have 
referred he assumed that all those gracious 
hopes expressed by the prophets in their 
most exalted moments are fulfilled in him. 
The audacity of his assumption was very 
clear to the people that heard him in the 
little synagogue. The Jews understood 
the meaning of his position and sought to 
kill him. They did not know of the power 
that wrought in his soul or of the revelation 
that was luminous in his consciousness, as 
to who he was and for what he had come. 

His attitude toward nature is startling, 
even quite unique, and yet there is a sol- 
emn quiet, a strange reserve and consist- 
ency about it all. He assumes that nature 
is perfectly plastic to his touch and all her 
forces obedient to his will. He turns the 
water into wine without ostentation ; he 
feeds the multitudes with the scanty loaves 
and fishes without noise ; he heals all sorts 



116 Christianity and the Christ. 

of bodily maladies — deafness, blindness, 
dumbness, paralysis — without remedies ; 
he calms the turbulent waves without 
effort ; he commands without hesitation, 
and grim death loosens his hold, and Laza- 
rus walks again among his friends. The 
four gospels constantly presuppose this at- 
titude of authority over nature which we 
have claimed for Jesus. And Paul's testi- 
mony on the subject as it appears in the 
fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians is be- 
yond dispute. 

In order to get the bearing of this evi- 
dence upon Christ's self-consciousness, 
conceive of him as taking this attitude to- 
ward nature. I have heard of an insane 
man that claimed he could make the win- 
dow open at his command. The win- 
dow would not obey. But how did Jesus 
think of himself w^hen, standing on the 
deck of that little vessel, he said to the 
waves, *^ Peace, be still ?" Or, when stand- 
ing among the friends of the dead Lazarus, 
he said, '' Lazarus, come forth?" Did he 



Christ's Self-Consciousness. 117 

expect to be obeyed ? Go out and stand 
upon the shore of the lake lashed by the 
tempest ; or look into the face of your 
friend four days dead and measure the stu- 
pendous assumptions of the man that at- 
tempts to play the role of the Lord of 
nature. 

We might argue the sinlessness of Jesus 
from the pure and holy influence he has 
exerted in the world, and there would be 
force in such an argument. His doctrines 
cannot be changed except to compromise 
them. His life as we know it cannot be 
improved. But such high moral teaching 
and such a moral life as is portrayed in 
the Gospel demands a sinless source. The 
purity of the fountain determines the 
purity of the stream, but the argument 
cannot be developed here. We must go 
directly to the claims he makes for him- 
self. He taught that he did always those 
things that were well-pleasing to his Fa- 
ther. He raised the question which even 
the purest man does not ask, '' Which of you 



118 Christianity and the Christ. 

convinceth me of sin?''"^ He impressed 
his disciples with the belief that he was 
sinless. He passed through the severest 
tests of character, but we have no evi- 
dence that he ever swerved from the law of 
holiness. In outward act, in temper, in 
courageous endurance, in every virtue, he 
stands spotless and inimitable. He never 
repented or prayed to be forgiven. Here is 
the suspension of a law which has held its 
unyielding sway over every individual of the 
race ; but in Jesus, as he went out and in 
among men for thirty-three years, sin 
was dethroned. What a luminous hour is 
that in the dark history of the centuries ! 
Sin dethroned in one life, but dominant 
again with its vicious dominance in the 
soul of every man from the cross on Calva- 
ry until the year 1894! No wonder that 
the calendar of the centuries dates now 
from the hour of the angel's song. The 
law of sin suspended ! That was a mir- 
acle more potent far than any wrought 

* John viii, 46. 



Christ's Self-Consciousness. 119 

upon blind eyes, paralytic limbs, or dead 
bodies. 

In harmony with all this he assumes the 
prerogative to forgive sin. He said to the 
sick of the palsy, '' Son, thy sins are for- 
given." ^ The scribes were startled and 
asked, ^^ Who can forgive sin but one, even 
God ? " f This is a divine prerogative. 
How did he think of himself in this act ? 
Was he playing a part? Impossible. 
There was the clear light in his conscious- 
ness of an authority the Almighty has com- 
mitted to no other. The Messiah of 
prophecy ! The Lord of nature ! The 
man that dared to forgive sin ! They 
seem to belong together. 

We may easily pass from his sinlessness 
and the right he claims to forgive sin to 
the authority he assumes over the souls 
of men. Other men have commanded 
men in the name of God and by the 
authority of the truth. The prophets of 
old could curse the nation that did not 

* Mark ii, 5. f Mark ii, 7. 



120 Christianity and the Christ. 

obey God, but Jesus Christ assumes a 
very different attitude. He teaches the 
Jews that they could not have Hfe because 
they would not come unto him. Is he the 
source of spiritual life to the Jew? He 
teaches that m.en are to find eternal 
life by believing in him. And is he thus 
the fountain of life eternal to all men ? 
He teaches that his claim must be put be- 
fore that of the dearest earthly friends and 
even before life itself. A man must be 
ready to forsake houses and lands, father 
and mother, and wife and children, if need 
be, to meet liis claim. Is his claim really 
the final claim upon moral beings, and must 
every other claimant bow down to him ? 

If we study his relation to his apostles 
and disciples, what do we find ? He de- 
votes three years to the inculcation of the 
principles of his kingdom. He then in- 
forms them that they are to be witnesses for 
him, beginning at Jerusalem and continu- 
ing through Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, 
and to the utmost parts of the earth. They 



Christ's Self-Consciousness. 121 

were to fear nothing, neither kings nor 
councils, nor death itself. They were to 
take no equipment. In him they had the 
guarantee of all authority and of all 
power."^ Measure the meaning of the 
great commission. How did he dare to 
assume such responsibility ? What thought 
did he entertain of himself in making this 
venture against the prejudice of the Jews, 
the fickleness of his disciples, the selfish- 
ness of the human heart, the obduracy of 
the human will, against the sin and sinful- 
ness of the race? And what do the cen- 
turies say of the venture? They stand as 
witnesses to say: *^We have been illumi- 
nated by the light that shone in his soul, 
and lifted Godward by the power of which 
he must have been clearly conscious.'* 

If there were anything yet more star- 
tling in his inner life, it was the attitude he 
dared to assume toward Jehovah. 

Says Horace Bushnell: '^ Imagine a hu- 
man creature saying to the world, ' I came 

* See Matt, x, 25-30, and Matt, xxviii, 16-20. 



122 Christianity and the Christ. 

from the Father,' 'ye are from beneath, 
I am from above,' facing all the intelli- 
gence and philosophy of the world, and 
saying in bold assurance, * Behold a great- 
er than Solomon is herey * I am the 
light of the world.' Hear him promising 
openly in his death, * I will draw all men 
unto me;' addressing the infinite Majesty 
and testifying, ' I have glorified thee on 
the earth ; ' calling to the human race, 
'Come unto me; '' follow me.' " ''What 
figure," says Bushnell, " would a man 
present in such language, * I and the Fa- 
ther?' He goes even beyond this, and ap- 
parently without any thought of excess or 
presumption ; classing himself with the 
divine Majesty in a common plural he 
says, ^We will come unto him and make 
our abode with him.' Imagine any, the 
greatest and holiest of mankind, any 
prophet or apostle, saying we^ of himself 
and the great Jehovah ! " Is it true that 
before Abraham was he was? Is it true 
that he was somehow connected with tlie 



Christ's Self-Consciousness. 123 

unfoldment of a great revelation which cul- 
minated at last in his incarnation? 

If so, then many otherwise inexplicable 
things have become explicable : prophecy 
and its fulfillment ; the visit of the Magi 
and the songs of the angels ; the inimitable 
words and the matchless character ; the 
sinlessness and the miracles ; the audacious 
assumptions and the corresponding achieve- 
ments; the trend of modern history and 
the hope of the modern world — these all 
find easy and natural relations with him 
who was at once the Son of God and the 
Son of Mary. When Jesus is allowed to 
stand as he presents himself to the thought 
of his apostles and the thought of the 
Church, the whole movement of revelation 
from Abraham to the cross, and from the 
cross until the present hour, becomes 
supremely reasonable. The profoundest 
question of the ages is this: What did 
Christ think of himself? The most practi- 
cal question of the age is this : What do 
we think of Christ ? 



124 Christianity and the Christ. 



CHAPTER VI. 

CHRIST AND THE RESURRECTION. 

EVERY conceivable hypothesis has 
been tried on this doctrine of the 
resurrection, and ev^ery hypothesis has 
proved a failure except the gospel hypoth- 
esis, that Christ died and rose again from 
the dead and is alive for evermore. The 
old charge that the disciples stole 
the body while the guards slept was 
abandoned long ago. When we remember 
that that old Roman jailer at Philippi pro- 
posed to kill himself"^ because he had 
allowed the prisoners under his charge to 
escape, we shall see how weak was the 
hypothesis that while the guards slept his 
disciples stole the body aw^ay. Moreover, 
such a piece of lying hypocrisy would 
have been so inconsistent with the unde- 

* Acts xvi, 27. 



Christ and the Resurrection. 125 

niable sincerity of the apostles, so contra- 
dictory to the hfe they lived, and the 
death they died as disciples of the Master, 
that the absurdity is too apparent. It 
cannot be rationally maintained. 

The claim that Jesus swooned but did 
not die is refuted by the inconsistencies 
that multiply at every step. How did this 
fact escape the attention of the guards? 
What could a man in such a condition as 
he must have been in — even if not dead — 
do with himself? The loss of blood, the 
agony, the weakness, would have made it 
necessary for him to have had the most 
delicate nursing to restore him, and that 
for a long time. Did the disciples steal 
the body, resuscitate him, and nurse him to 
health and strength again, and then, aban- 
doning their old religious faith, did they 
go out to live a lie while they lived and 
then die for that lie, while they taught the 
highest type of morality ever taught on 
earth? The contradiction is too glaring. 
The position is untenable. 



126 Christianity and the Christ. 

They are represented as having no idea 
of nature and the continuity of her laws. 
This charge is made for the purpose of 
making it appear easy for them to beheve, 
without evidence, in the interruption of the 
hiws of nature. But that this representa- 
tion, too, is an exaggeration is quite evi- 
dent, and false because it is an exaggera- 
tion. These fishermen had been knocked 
about too much not to have known some- 
thing of the world. Contact with men and 
conflict with the ugly currents of life had 
given much severe and rugged discipline. 
There was prevalent in the time, as appears 
from the New Testament, such an apprecia- 
tion of nature as made the miracles to be 
very w^onderful events. When the man 
blind from his birth had his eyes opened, 
they say, " Since the world began it was 
never heard that any one opened the eyes of 
a man born blind." ^ Why did the disciples 
refuse to believe the reports of the women, 
and regard them as idle tales? Why did 

■^ John ix, 32. 



Christ and the Resurrection. 127 

Thomas insist on the evidence of his 
senses, refusing to beheve the testimony 
of those who had seen Jesus, until he 
should see the nail-prints and feel the 
spear-wound ? Greek philosophy had 
spread far and wide. The Sadducees, who 
believed neither in angels nor the resurrec- 
tion, were the skeptics of the time, and 
would keep the public mind alert on all 
the lines of thought that make for the 
permanence of the natural. Therefore, 
in spite of their superstition, we are com- 
pelled to recognize the fact that these 
men were well equipped to observe the 
great outstanding facts of this supernat- 
ural revelation ; to see their relation to 
the course of nature, as in the case of the 
blind man, and to report the facts in the 
most simple, straightforward, and trust- 
worthy way. That they were competent 
witnesses it is vain to deny. It is not 
necessary that a man should be either a 
linguist, scientist, or philosopher in order 
to be accepted as a competent witness in 



128 Christianity and the Christ. 

a court of law concerning matters of fact. 
These witnesses were not called upon to 
forniulate any theory ; they were called 
upon to report the things made known to 
them through their senses. They were to 
report what they heard and saw, and for 
this kind of testimony they were well qual- 
ified. 

Very much has been made of the dis- 
crepancies which appear in the several ac- 
counts of the resurrection. It may be free- 
ly admitted that there are discrepancies. 
This would necessarily be the case in a nar- 
rative that was transmitted orally. Only a 
stenographically written account could be 
free from such discrepancies. These vari- 
ations show that there was no collusion — 
the writers did not combine and agree 
to make up an account of the resurrec- 
tion. But such an admission by no 
means supports the conclusion so fre- 
quently drawn therefrom. We have seen 
in a preceding chapter that the tens of 
thousands of variations in the manuscripts 



Christ and the Resurrection. 129 

from which our New Testament comes are 
of very little consequence. When Guiteau 
was on trial for his life, one witness testi- 
fied that the man who shot Garfield w^ore 
a soft hat, another testified that he was 
bareheaded ; but this discrepancy, this 
contradiction, did not disturb the evidence^ 
which showed that Guiteau, hat or no hat, 
was the man that shot Garfield. In any 
court of law you may find witnesses con- 
tradicting each other, and even the same 
witness, from different points of view, con- 
tradicting himself. The important ques- 
tion is this: Upon what do the witnesses 
agree? When all the testimony, in spite 
of discrepancies and contradictions, points 
to one fact, that fact is regarded as reason- 
ably established. That the gospel wit- 
nesses are all agreed upon the resurrection 
of Jesus there can be no doubt. 

The failure and abandonment of the 
several theories is instructive. 

Reimarus taught that the supernatural 
was put upon the narrative hy fraud ; but 



130 Christianity and the Christ. 

that theory was short-lived. Paulus taught 
that the apostles thought miracles were 
wrought, but that they were mistaken. 
That, too, was soon abandoned, for Strauss 
demolished it by the claim that if these 
gospel narratives came to us from eyewit- 
nesses, then the supernatural elements can 
never be eliminated from them. 

Renan, the brilliant French savant who 
has just gone from us, finds none of the 
above theories satisfactory. He acknowl- 
edges the genuineness and authenticity 
of a large portion of Paul's epistles, and 
places the gospel of Matthew as early as 
84 A. D., and that of Mark in 74 A. D. 
But he attempts to break the force of the 
testimony for the resurrection by cred- 
iting the belief to visions. He tells us 
that ''' a gigantic dream had for ages pur- 
sued the Jewish people, perpetually re- 
newing its youth in its decrepitude;" 
and this dream he continues through the 
apostolic age. Mary's conversation with 
Christ at the tomb becomes in his hand 



Christ and the Resurrection. 131 

first a '' light-vision/' and then a ^^ shadow " 
which fades away ; but she thought she 
heard her name called, she thought it was 
the voice of the Master. Her love accom- 
plishes the rest. The disciples believe 
when they find the tomb empty. A few 
doubt, it is true, but another vision re- 
moves that doubt. His account of Jesus's 
appearance is as follows : As they were 
assembled '^ during a moment of silence 
some slight breath passed over the face of 
the assembly. At these decisive periods 
of time a current of air, a creaking window, 
or a chance murmur are sufficient to fix 
the belief of peoples for ages. At the 
same time that the bfeath was perceived 
they fancied that they heard sounds. 
Some of them said that they discerned the 
word ' schalom ' — ^ happiness,' or * peace.* 
This was the ordinary salutation of Jesus, 
and the word by which he signified his 
presence. No possibility of doubt ; Jesus 
is present ; he is in the assembly. That 
is his cherished voice ; each one recognizes 



132 Christianity and the Christ. 

it. This idea was all the more easily en- 
tertained because Jesus had said that 
whenever they were assembled in his 
name he would be in the midst of them. 
It w^as, then, an acknowledged fact that 
Jesus had appeared before his assembled 
disciples on the night of Sunday."* He 
does not tell us that this is all pure fancy. 
He fancies that there viay have been a 
creaking window ; that there Diay have 
been a passing breath ; that some one may 
have said he heard a voice, and by all 
of these may have teens he proposes to 
account for the belief that Jesus had ap- 
peared, and to substitute these fancies for 
the testimony of the witnesses, that he 
did appear. He represents the account of 
the later appearances as due to the dreamy 
state in which the disciples lived. He 
writes : '' It was John and Peter, more than 
all the others, who had been favored with 
these intimate conversations with the well- 
beloved phantom. One day Peter, dream- 

*See Renan's The Apostles, p. 6S. 



Christ and the Resurrection. 133 

ing, perhaps (but why do I say this? Was 
not their hfe on these shores a perpetual 
dream ?), thought that he heard Jesus ask 
him, ' Lovest thou me ? ' The question 
was thrice repeated. Peter, altogether un- 
der the influence of tender and sad feel- 
ings, imagined that he replied, ^ O ! yea, 
Lord! Thou knowest that I love thee,* 
and on each occasion the apparition said, 
* Feed my sheep/ ""^ Think of Peter and 
John as living so dreamy a life that they 
can project their phantom fancies outward, 
and make them so objective and real as to 
hold conversations with them, and then 
believe that they receive commands from 
them, and then go and die to carry out 
these commands. 

There is no possibility of condensing the 
theory of Renan and producing its effect, 
for it is the effect such as a picture would 
produce and not an argument. There is a 
subtle charm in his diction, an insinuating 
facility in his assumptions, which is intox- 

* TAe Apostles, p. 75. 



134 Christianity and the Christ. 

icating, and which makes one feel as though 
his head were enwrapped in some perfumed, 
sense-bewildering halo. This weird wizard 
waves his magic wand and the dissolving 
views begin to appear ; words and theories 
and visions melt and coalesce as in a dream, 
and you almost fancy that you yourself see 
all that this prose poet would have you 
see. 

He fights shy of analysis, and that is not 
surprising. He says: ^' After Jesus, it is 
Mary who has done most for the founda- 
tion of Christianity. The shadow created 
by the delicate sensibility of Magdalene 
wanders still on the earth. Queen and 
patroness of idealists, Magdalene knew 
better than anyone how to assert her 
dream and impose on every one the vision 
of her passionate soul. Her great wom- 
anly affirmation, ' He has risen,' has been 
the basis of the faith of humanity. Aw^ay, 
impotent reason ! Apply no cold analysis 
to this chef d oeitvre of idealism and of love. 
If wisdom refuses to console this poor hu- 



Christ and the Resurrection. 135 

man race betrayed by fate, let folly attempt 
the enterprise. Where is the sage who 
has given to the world as much joy as the 
possessed Mary of Magdala ? *' "^ It is not 
strange that Renan objected to the appli- 
cation of *^ cold analysis '' to this tissue of 
fancy. The fact is that the vision was 
needed too often. What shall we do with 
the testimony of this witness, who says : 

For I delivered unto you first of all that which also 
I received, how that Christ died for our sins according 
to the scriptures ; and that he was buried ; and that he 
hath been raised on the third day according to the scrip- 
tures ; and that he appeared to Cephas ; then to the 
twelve ; then he appeared to above five hundred breth- 
ren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, 
but some are fallen asleep ; then he appeared to James ; 
then to all the apostles ; and last of all, as unto one born 
out of due time, he appeared to me also, f 

Is it possible to satisfy this evidence by 
saying that these witnesses are the dupes 
of an excited fancy ? The discourage- 
ment, the dejection, the despair were 
hostile to hope, and, if we trust the 
record, there could have been no expec- 

* T/ie Apostles, p. 6i. f I Cor. xv, 3-8. 



136 Christianity and the Christ. 

tation of Jesus's return out of which to 
construct the vision. Renan makes no 
account of the test given to this '' phan- 
tom " by the repeated appearances ; of the 
test that was made by speaking with it, by 
seeing it, by touching it, by hearing it, 
and by eating with it ; he fails to account 
for the revolution in feeling from utter 
despondency and blank despair to bound- 
ing joy and indomitable courage. It will 
not meet the case to say, as he does say, 
that they wrought themselves up to the 
belief that Jesus did not die, for that is pure 
fiction, nor to say that any sagacious man 
could have foretold the result with them.^ 
Such a statement is in defiance of all the 
evidence. He makes no explanation of the 
removal of the stubborn doubt of Thomas ; 
he thinks it of no account that Jesus ap- 
peared to Paul and to five hundred breth- 
ren at once, many of whom wxre living at 
the time Paul wrote ; he forgets that this 
faith stood them in good stead in the dun- 

* T/ie Apostles, p. 57. 



Christ and the Resurrection. 137 

geon and at the block, that they went 
through fire and flood beHeving and preach- 
ing Jesus and the resurrection. Can the 
facts upon which they build their faith be 
disposed of by supposing that they mistook 
apparitions which had no objective reality, 
heard words which were not spoken, and 
saw deeds which were not done ? 

There are so many considerations that 
lie against Renan's theory that it is diffi- 
cult to even mention them in the space 
allowed us here. Our Sunday, which is in 
commemoration of the resurrection of the 
Lord, is a witness to the truth of the apos- 
tle*s testimony. We have a letter from the 
younger Pliny, written to the emperor Tra- 
jan in the year i lo A. D., in which he speaks 
of them as meeting in the early morning 
of a stated day for worship ; they sing a 
hymn to Christ as to God, and separate. In 
the latter part of the day they meet to par- 
take of an innocent meal. There can be 
no reasonable doubt that this was the 
Lord's day. John was in the Spirit on 



138 Christiaxity and the Christ. 

the Lord's day, on the island of Patmos, 
and John had seen Christ. Why does he 
mark that day as the Lord's day? How 
did this day become estabhshed ? how did 
it supplant the Jewish Sabbath? The day 
is evidently a memorial of Christ's resurrec- 
tion, and its general observance by the very 
early Church shows the faith of the Church 
from that time. Every ringing church bell 
. voices the faith of Christendom in the res- 
urrection of Jesus. 

That these narratives did not get their 
authoritative standing except under most 
careful supervision is made evident from 
the fact that the apostolic fathers — the dis- 
ciples of the apostles — do not consider 
their testimony to be final except as they 
teach what the apostles taught. These 
fathers make a wide difference between 
the utterances of apostles and disciples in 
general. They admitted no book to the 
New Testament which had not apostolic 
authority. We see the care with which 
that place in the apostolic body was filled 



Christ and the Resurrection. 139 

which was made vacant by the death of 
Judas. 

Of the men therefore which have companied with us 
all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and went out 
among us, beginning from the baptism of John, unto the 
day that he was received up from us, of these must one 
become a witness with us of his resurrection.* 

He must be an eyewitness, one who had 
gone out and in with them during all the 
period of Jesus's public ministry. 

The same caution appears in Luke^s in- 
troduction to his gospel : 

Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to draw up a 
narrative concerning those matters which have been ful- 
filled among us, even as they delivered them unto us, 
which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and minis- 
ters of the word, it seemed good to me also, having traced 
the course of all things accurately from the first, to write 
unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus ; that thou 
mightest know the certainty concerning the things where- 
in thou wast instructed.! 

The man who assumes to bear testi- 
mony to these events must be chosen 
with care, and must have had the best 
possible opportunity to see and hear, 
to handle and test the facts. It is evi- 

* Acts i, 21, 22. f Luke i, 1-4. 



140 Christianity and the Christ. 

dent that these apostles were conscious 
of their mission as witnesses : Jesus 
chose them for this purpose ; gave them 
special manifestations and special explana- 
tions for their work. It has been truly 
said that he spent much time with twelve 
men. He was training them to be his 
apostles. The immortal interests of the 
race are in a most important sense com- 
mitted for a few years to the keeping of 
.these twelve men. 

We can only mention a few of the more 
marked characteristics of these witnesses. 
In the first place they were honest. It is 
hardly possible to-day to charge them with 
deliberate fraud. They intended to tell 
the truth ; they tell their story in detail ; 
they report the names of the persons that 
went to the tomb, the time of the day, the 
surprise, and the unbelief of the disciples ; 
they tell us that Peter and another disciple 
ran together ; that the other disciple out- 
ran Peter but went not into the tomb ; 
that Peter went and stooped down and 



Christ and the Resurrection. 141 

looked in and saw the linen clothes lie. A 
narrative thus given in detail has the 
marks of honesty about it. It is not a de- 
vice of rhetoric which makes that disciple 
outrun Peter and then pause ; which shows 
us Peter passing on and bending down 
to look into the tomb. It has the charac- 
teristics, as have the other accounts, of a 
narrative by an eyewitness. 

The gospels seem to put emphasis upon 
the fact that all these manifestations were 
to the senses. In the first chapter of the 
Acts Luke tells us that " He showed him- 
self alive after his passion by many proofs.'* 
But the language is stronger than this. 
Professor Thayer, in his New Testament 
lexicon, renders the Greek (refCfxripLa) as 
follows : *'That from which something is 
surely and plainly known ; an indubitable 
evidence, a proof." Liddell and Scott 
make the word which is in the plural 
stronger still ; it indicates '^ a proof from 
sure signs or tokens, a demonstrative 
proof.'* There is another significant word 



142 Christianity and the Christ. 

[dTTTavofievog) which ^' conveys the idea of 
the Lord's having been in the habit of 
showing himself/' It is a '' frequentative " 
verb, and as such expresses continuous or 
repeated action.^ The choice of these 
words was not accidental. Luke had in 
mind the thought that he was frequently 
seen, that he ate with his disciples, talked 
with, '' speaking the things concerning the 
kingdom of God ; " that they touched him 
and handled him, making these signs " in- 
fallible." This argument is cumulative in 
its force. If we follow the order of these 
appearances as given us by John we find 
Mary saying, '^ I have seen the Lord." At 
the next appearance *^ He showed unto 
them his hands and his side. The disci- 
ples therefore were glad when they sazu 
the Lord." These witnesses reported to 
Thomas, saying, *' We have seen the Lord ; " 
then comes the manifestation made to 
Thomas, who believed after he had touched 

* r/ie Apology of the Christian Religion^ by Mac- 

gregor, p. 3S5. 



Christ and the Resurrection. 143 

the Lord and seen the nail-prints. John 
gives us an account of one more manifes- 
tation, and that was to several disciples at 
the Sea of Tiberias. Peter comes to the 
front as usual, and after the great draught 
of fishes Jesus invites them to break their 
fast, and then holds that memorable con- 
versation with Peter, asking, '* Lovest thou 
me," and charging him, *^ Feed my sheep.'* 
Peter also emphasizes this testimony of 
the senses saying: ^* We did not follow cun- 
ningly devised fables, . . . but we were eye- 
witnesses of his majesty." "^ John writes : 

That which was from the beginning, that which we 
have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that 
which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning 
the Word of life (and the life was manifested, and we 
have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the 
life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was 
manifested unto us) ; that which we have seen and heard 
declare we unto you also, that ye also may have fellow- 
ship with us : yea, and our fellowship is with the Father, 
and with his Son Jesus Christ : and these things we 
write, that our joy may be fulfilled. f 

If we add to this the language of the 
apostle Paul we have a body of testimony 

* 2 Peter i, i6. f i John i, 1-4. 



U4 Christianity and the Christ. 

that stands firm as Gibraltar. With un- 
shaken confidence the apostles went to 
their mission and to death preaching 
everywhere the gospel of the resurrection. 
Remembering, then, the failure of all 
other theories to account for the facts — the 
memorial of the resurrection, in the Lord's 
day ; the extreme caution in the appoint- 
ment of a successor to Judas ; the early and 
universal preaching of the resurrection ; the 
emphasis put upon the testimony of the 
senses ; the independent testimony of 
Paul ; the assumption he makes that this 
was the faith of the Corinthian Church 
only a few years after the crucifixion ; the 
vital relation of the event to the whole 
system of religious thought and expecta- 
tion with which it stands connected ; and, 
far above all other evidence, the majestic 
personality of Jesus Christ — we may rea- 
sonably believe that God did bring again 
'' from the dead that great Shepherd of the 
sheep," and that he will bring us up also 
with him. 



Christ and the Apostle Paul. 145 



CHAPTER VII. 

CHRIST AND THE APOSTLE PAUL. 

\T THAT evidence is there in the con- 
^ ^ version and Hfe of the apostle Paul 
for the truth of Christianity ? We may 
study this question, in the first place, by 
asking. How did Saul the persecutor be- 
come Paul the apostle to the Gentiles ? 
We have the answer to that question from 
Luke, the companion of Paul : 

And as he journeyed, it came to pass that he drew 
nigh unto Damascus : and suddenly there shone round 
about him a light out of heaven : and he fell upon the 
earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, 
why persecutest thou me ? And he said, Who art thou, 
Lord ? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest : 
but rise, and enter into the city, and it shall be told thee 
what thou must do. And the men that journeyed with 
him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but beholding 
no man. And Saul arose from the earth ; and when his 
eyes were opened, he saw nothing ; and they led him by 
the hand, and brought him into Damascus. And he 
was three days without sight, and did neither eat nor 
drink.* 

* Acts ix, 3-9. 
10 



U6 Christianity and the Christ. 

This is the account given us in the Acts 
by Luke, the companion of Paul. We 
have a more extended account in Paul's 
speech at Jerusalem, spoken to the people 
from the stairs of the castle. That this 
account comes from Paul himself no one is 
disposed to dispute. We know the life of 
the apostle Paul from documents entirely 
trustworthy and from his own hand. He 
gives us a condensed account of a part of 
his life and of his claim to apostleship by 
an independent revelation, as follows : 

For neither did I receive it from man, nor was I 
taught it, but it came to me through the revelation of 
Jesus Christ For ye have heard of my manner of life 
in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond 
measure I persecuted the church of God, and made 
havoc of it : and I advanced in the Jews* religion be- 
yond many of mine own age among my countrymen, 
being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my 
fathers. But when it was the good pleasure of God, 
who separated me, even from my mother's womb, and 
called- me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me, 
that I might preach him among the Gentiles ; imme- 
diately I conferred not with flesh and blood : neither 
went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles 
before me : but I went away into Arabia ; and again I 
returned unto Damascus. Then after three years I went 



Christ and the Apostle Paul. 147 

up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and tarried with him 
fifteen days. But other of the apostles saw I none, save 
James the Lord's brother.* 

His letters, studied in connection with 
the Acts, give us a HfeUke picture, a kind 
of miniature photograph, of this student 
of Gamahel, this Pharisee of the Pharisees, 
this religious zealot, this stalwart defender 
of the faith. He is profoundly convinced 
that the faith of his fathers is at stake, and 
that he must hunt this fanaticism out of 
existence. We can but admire the high 
loyalty which could hold him steady while 
the chosen executioners opened the shining 
way to Stephen^s royal soul. His ^' slaugh- 
ter-breathing " w^as a terror to all who 
knew him, and we do not wonder that 
Ananias went reluctantly to open his blind 
eyes and let the light into his blind soul. 

We have seen how Renan accounts for 
the belief in the resurrection of Jesus. He 
applies the same hypothesis to the conver- 
sion of Saul. In the first place he makes 

* Gal. i, 12-19. 



148 Christianity and the Christ. 

Saul, while on his way to Damascus, the 
victim of a remorseful conscience. He 
develops that theory out of the following 
suppositions : Saul may have suffered great 
mental depression ; may have had a very 
tender regard for these Christians ; he may 
have seen the face of Jesus looking re- 
proachfully upon him ; he may have been 
much impressed by the reports of the ap- 
paritions of Jesus ; he may have fancied 
that the houses seen through the trees as he 
drew near Damascus were the houses of 
his victims.^ Let it be noted that the 
record does not show that Saul had these 
experiences. They were possible^ not prob- 
able, and that is their full force. But to 
conceive them as possible, and then think 
of them as actual, and then to argue that 
Paul was suffering from remorse is to 
play with loaded dice. There is a more 
reasonable account of Saul's state of mind. 
Paul himself informs us, in his defense 
before Agrippa, that he verily thought 

* The Apostles, pp. 171, 172. 



Christ and the Apostle Paul. 149 

he ** ought to do many things contrary 
to the name of Jesus of Nazareth." He 
says that when these saints ^^ were put 
to death I gave my vote against them." 
We are told that when Jerusalem was razed, 
and when the conflagration ran on toward 
the temple and caught its sacred cedar 
wood and melted its golden tables, every 
Jew was fired with a rage which made him 
fight with superhuman strength. 

*' Through their torn veins reviving fury ran, 
And life's last anger warmed the dying man." 

Paul gives us no evidence that he was 
the victim of remorse. His idea of the 
majestic personality of the Messiah, of 
his sway over the nations, of his eternal 
reign upon the throne of David, made 
it impossible for him to accept Jesus of 
Nazareth as the King of the Jews. If 
he ever hesitated the most natural sup- 
position is that he fought that hesita- 
tion down with the thought that this 
crucified Nazarene and his grimy fisher- 
men could not possibly fill out the glow- 



150 Christianity and the Christ. 

ing prophetic picture of the Messianic 
reign. He saw the sacred cedar, the 
golden altar, and the Holy of Holies all 
profaned and imperiled by this mob of 
pretentious fanatics. There is no material 
out of which to develop remorse except in 
the fancy of the objector. Saul's lofty 
soul was aglow with the righteous wrath 
of a man who fought against the enemies 
of the national faith, enemies who waged 
their battle, too, in the very streets of the 
holy city. 

Renan makes at least thirty suppositions 
concerning matters of fact in order to carry 
his anti-supernatural hypothesis through. 
The theory of remorse is built up for the 
purpose of making a series of later suppo- 
sitions plausible. He goes on to suppose 
the occurrence of a thunder storm, a sun- 
stroke or something like it, a state of un- 
consciousness, a three days' fever accom- 
panied by delirium and hallucinations, and 
out of the delirium of these three days he 
works up Paul's faith in the supernatural 



Christ and the Apostle Paul. 151 

revelation made to him, and sends him 
forth to the world the great apostle to the 
Gentiles. It is not strange that he ex- 
presses himself with some hesitation as to 
whether this does, after all, account for the 
facts in question. Nevertheless he prefers 
to account for PauTs conversion, which he 
does not deny, by a series of hallucinations, 
connected with a thunder storm and a sun- 
stroke, rather than to admit that Jesus ap- 
peared to Saul, as Paul to the close of his 
life constantly affirmed. We need to re- 
member that all these principal supposi- 
tions were made under the vitiating influ- 
ence of the theory that the supernatural 
could not be admitted. The question still 
remains. Have we accounted for the facts? 
There must have been something very 
peculiar, indeed, about that thunder. It is 
not often that the muttering lips of the 
black heavens articulate so distinctly the 
'' Hebrew tongue.** Hear its *'Saul, Saul, 
why persecutest thou me?" Hear its ''I 
am Jesus of Nazareth whom thou perse- 



15*2 Christianity and the Christ. 

cutest." Hear its *' It is hard for thee to 
kick against the pricks." And has the 
thunder foresight as well? Yea, verily! 
Hear it directing this cowed, conscience- 
smitten culprit: *' Go to Damascus: and 
there it shall be told thee what thou 
shalt do." Hear it appointing this Jew to 
his Gentile lifework : ** I will send thee 
far hence to the Gentiles.'* This is the 
most eloquent thunder the world has ever 
heard. A thunder so unique has some of 
the startling notes of a revelation. 

But even such an accidental combination 
of fier)' wrath, on Saul's part, of thunder 
and lightning on nature's part, and the 
well-timed and comforting words of Ana- 
nias, the devout and trembling evangelist, 
issuing in such results, would be sorely in 
need of explanation. Renan comes peril- 
ously near making sick fancies and the 
product of diseased imagination of more 
value to the truth than solid facts and ra- 
tional beliefs. If the visions of Marj^ and 
the disciples can giv^e the Lord back to the 



Christ and the Apostle Paul. 153 

faith and hope of the world ; if the thun- 
der and Hghtning, combined with fever, 
delirium, remorse, and temporary demen- 
tia, all accurately though accidentally 
timed to the discreet words of some Ana- 
nias, can give us such men as Paul, why 
not trust to incoherent dreams and airy 
visions? Away with science, cold analysis, 
and facts. 

The change in the man was very great. 
His theology was changed. From that 
hour a revolution began, which gave him a 
new view of Old Testament prophecy, es- 
pecially that relating to the Messiah and 
the Gospel for the race. He had been a 
bigoted Pharisee, as he himself says, ** a 
Pharisee of the Pharisees.'' But all this is 
changed. He becomes preeminently the 
apostle to the Gentiles. Far in advance 
of Peter he sees that the Gospel has no 
limitations ; that it is for Jew and Gentile 
alike, male and female, bond and free. 

His whole theory of salvation was 
changed. Hitherto it had been a theory 



154 Christianity and the Christ. 

of works and of ceremonial observances. 
But all that is swept away. He declares : 

Howbeit what things were gain to me, these have I 
counted loss for Christ. Yea verily, and I count all 
things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of 
Christ Jesus my Lord : for whom I suffered the loss of 
all things, and do count them but dung, that I may gain 
Christ.* 

His affections have been regenerated. 
His unquenchable love for his kinsmen — 
he could wish himself anathema from 
Christ for them — equaled only by his life- 
long passion for the Gentiles, shows this 
new creation of the affections in a most 
vivid way. He accounts for this change 
by the power of God, made operative in 
him in that hour w^hen he met Jesus of 
Nazareth on the way to Damascus. 

We have to account not only for this 
change in Saul's soul — which might have 
been a momentary experience, and would 
have been such had there not been some- 
thing more real than Renan supposes — but 
also for the life and lifework which followed. 
* Phil, iii, 7, 8. 



Christ and the Apostle Paul. 155 

Recall the tests of his faith. He was un- 
derthe suspicion of the apostles themselves, 
because of his freedom from ceremonialism 
and his comprehensive views of the Gospel. 
He had to make defense of his apostle- 
ship to the Church at Galatia ; he went 
through manifold perils both by land and 
by sea ; he was pursued, beaten with rods, 
and imprisoned ; he was on trial for his life 
and waited through long years for the un- 
righteous sentence. During all this time 
he walked in the unclouded light of that 
midday revelation which dawned upon 
him on the way to Damascus. His spirit- 
ual vision is as clear as the light ; his in- 
tellectual grip like the unbroken law of 
gravitation. The intensity of his desires 
for gospel holiness becomes a veritable 
conflagration in his soul. The quality of 
his emotions is of the finest. There is 
naught of the old Maccabean spirit. He 
is no longer a slaughter-breather rejoicing 
in the possession of an ecclesiastical halter 
by which he may drag men and women to 



156 Christianity and the Christ. 

judgment and then flog them with ecclesi- 
astical penalties. He sympathizes with 
the weak. Like his compassionate Master 
he is touched with the feeling of their in- 
firmities ; he burns with righteous indigna- 
tion at the remembrance of their wrongs ; 
he gloried in the cross of Christ. It mat- 
tered little to him whether he lived or 
died if the Gospel were only preached and 
believed. The emotions reveal the man, 
and PauTs supreme delight w^asin the cross 
of Christ and in the prosperity of his con- 
verts. 

How shall we account for this inner life, 
this new illumination, this furnace of gos- 
pel desire, this high quality of spiritual 
emotion, this granitic steadiness of pur- 
pose ? He accounts for it by affirming that 
he was not alone. He had met Jesus. The 
shock of that first contact regenerated him, 
and the unbroken continuity of that con- 
tact had sustained him. When he seemed 
to be alone he was not alone. The match- 
less personality of Jesus Christ is to Paul 



Christ and the Apostle Paul. 157 

the only possible explanation. He rests 
back on that spiritual presence for strength 
in his weakness and light in the darkness. 
The life he lived was not an isolated life, 
but the life of Christ in him. Intellect, 
emotions, and will were open, and always 
open, to the floods of life which are hid 
with Christ in God. The high potential 
of his spiritual life was its connection with 
this hidden life. This is PauFs account. 
Can any man give a more reasonable ac- 
count } 

The only purpose of a theory is to ac- 
count for the facts. Can any theory ex- 
cept Paul's explain the light, the voice, the 
commission, the blindness, the healing, the 
conviction, the radical revolution, the splen- 
did lifework, and the glorious death ? 

Perhaps, after all, that '^ gigantic dream " 
of a *' world destiny '* which haunted Israel 
and rejuvenated its life, as Renan says, 
may have been a revelation and not a 
dream. If so, perhaps we have in Saul, 
now become Paul, another illustration of 



loS Christianity and the Christ. 

that supernatural power which guided Is- 
rael, and which, working through the cen- 
turies and subduing all things to its own 
purj>oses, manifests itself to the Isaiahs 
and the Pauls, and makes them heralds of 
the glorj" yet to be revealed. 



Christ and the Sinner. 159 



w 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CHRIST AND THE SINNER. 

HATEVER the origin of sin may 
have been does not concern us here, 
nor what the origin of man. There comes 
a time in the history of every man when, 
in the h'ght of the reason that is in him, 
he perceives the right and the wrong ; he 
feels the impulse of obligation and lays 
the law of duty upon himself. But, al- 
though he sees the right, he does the 
wrong, and is conscious of his guilt. This 
mysterious power of sin works in him, a 
dominating law, and its wicked dominance 
and guilty entail are made clear to him by 
the testimony of his own consciousness. 
That damning testimony, which, like the 
blood spot on Lady Macbeth's hand, will 
not out, he has written in fixed and flam- 
ing colors along the whole course of his his- 



160 Christianity and the Christ. 

tory. We may read it in strange hiero- 
glyphics cut into enduring monuments ; we 
may find it standing boldly out in the great 
tragic literatures of Greece and Rome, of 
India, China, and Judea ; we may hear it in 
the piteous bleating of innocent lambs led 
dumb to sacrificial slaughter ; we may see 
it in the unkempt and nasty fakir of the 
Orient, and find it in the saint, prim and 
pretty, or stately and reverend, who bows 
at Christian altars. Goethe knows whereof 
he writes when he says, ^' There lies around 
us full many an abyss which fate has dug, 
but the deepest is here in the heart.** 
Only once has the continuity of that law 
been utterly broken and its bad reign suc- 
cessfully defied. Jesus the crucified shows 
no taint of sin ; he never confessed sin ; 
he never prayed to be forgiven. Man is a 
sinner, but seeks to become a saint. Can 
he be saved from the habit and guilt of 
sin ? Can he be delivered from this deep 
discord which runs through his life — from 
this inward strife, the root of all his mis- 



Christ and the Sinner. 161 

ery ? That is a question which has engaged 
the attention of all the ages. 

If we can get a clear view of the nature 
of sin we shall the more easily see what 
the needs of the sinner are, and Christ's 
relation to these needs. Sin is not an in- 
heritance from wicked ancestors. We may 
inherit wealth, but we cannot inherit sin. 
Sin is always a personal matter, an act of 
the will ; we may inherit ill-balanced pow- 
ers, turbulent passions, and lawless appe- 
tites, but inasmuch as this is the result 
of bad inheritance, insomuch it is not 
of the nature of sin ; it is below the moral 
plane. We are no more responsible for 
such an inheritance than we should be 
for any inherited physical deformity. 
Sin, which brings guilt and condem- 
nation, which involves choice and free- 
dom, can never be inherited. No moral 
being can be held responsible for what he 
could not avoid ; no moral being can sin 
except in the realm of what may be chosen 

or not chosen. Whatever we may call 
11 



162 Christianity and the Christ. 

those acts into which the free choice of the 
subject does not enter — whether we call 
them true or false, lovely or unlovely, help- 
ful or harmful — we cannot call them sins. 
Sin is a personal matter ; sin cannot be in- 
herited. 

Sin has many forms, but only one root, 
namely, selfishness, and that the lower 
self versus the higher ; for there is a self 
which no moral being may sacrifice for 
any consideration in the universe, a self 
which if we sacrifice we dethrone God. 
The seat of his throne is mysteriously in- 
volved in that ideal self which we are set 
to defend and to make actual. Between 
thisnatural self and this ideal self there is 
discord, the discord of which the apostle 
writes in the seventh chapter of Romans: 
'' But I see a different law in my members, 
warring against the law of my mind, and 
bringing me into captivity under the law 
of sin which is in my members."*^ This 
is ** the internal war between the reason 

* Rom. vii, 23. 



Christ and the Sinner. 163 

and the passions," of which Pascal writes. 
'* What a chaos, what a contradiction, what 
a prodigy is man," writes Rousseau. The 
selfish life fans the fires of internal discord, 
sets the man at war with men, and makes 
him a rebel against God. It fixes itself 
upon us in iron habits ; it serves its base 
ends with all the powers it can command 
in nature, man, and God, and if we foster 
this selfishness it will blacken all our days. 
But that man can be redeemed and car- 
ried up out of his sin to the realization of 
the ideal hfe seems probable from the very 
fact that such an ideal life is forever haunt- 
ing his dreams by night and illuminating 
with a holy light his vision by day. Neither 
is this experience limited to the peoples that 
have been blessed with the gospel light ; 
all over the heathen world may be found 
tragic and pitiful evidences of the working 
of that higher ideal. That Hindoo devotee 
who sits in silence by the sacred stream, 
who has not spoken for twenty-four 
years, or that ''sacred being" who has 



104 Christianity and the Christ. 

held his arms above his head for forty 
years until he cannot bring them down — 
these men and all whom they represent 
give startling emphasis to the prophecy 
which is in man himself, of the ideal life 
which is his birthright, and which he feels 
he ought to realize. To this end he must 
find some power that will carry him out of 
himself. 

When we really get back to the philoso- 
phy of our misery and our need we find 
that our selfishness cuts us off from God ; 
dependent on him as we are for our very 
being and continuance in being, there can 
be no truce in this internal, external, and 
eternal war until we find our life directed 
to him and centered in him. The ideal 
self of which we have spoken as the truer 
self, if we could make it actual, would carry 
us on to him. 

If we turn to the Christ to ask how he 
meets these deep spiritual necessities we 
find that the first step is in the way of re- 
pentance. That does not mean, in Christ's 



Christ and the Sinner. 165 

teaching, a superficial stir of the emotional 
life. It means that the moral subjects 
cease to choose sin ; cease to indorse, apol- 
ogize for, and extenuate, sin ; cease to 
warm vice in the bosom of affection ; cease 
to color and beautify it with the glamour 
of a corrupt imagination. The man that 
repents must seek to see sin as it is, a 
viper in his bosom. 

To do penance is not to repent ; to cease 
to do sin is to repent. To wear a hair 
shirt has no more virtue, though recom- 
mended by a Christian priest, than walking 
upon spikes, or swinging suspended upon 
hooks stuck into the flesh and recom- 
mended by heathen priests. Sin is a spir- 
itual thing, an attitude of mind, a 
bearing of intellect, affections, and will, 
and there can be no way out of it that 
does not reach a new attitude of mind, a 
new bearing of intellect, affections, and 
will. As long as the intellect thinks the 
evil thing, and the affections cherish it, 
and the man chooses it, so long sin re- 



166 Christianity and the Christ. 

mains. If some mighty archangel were to 
write upon the heavens, *' Forgiven," and 
were to attach our name to that writing, 
we should still be in sin, if intellect, affec- 
tions, and will remained in antagonism to 
God. Christ's teaching on this point is 
thoroughgoing. He does not minify the 
meaning of sin ; he knows the paralysis 
which sin works upon the higher powers ; 
he sees the Nemesis of the old Greek tra- 
gedians which follows the Ahabs until not 
a single member of the spotted family sur- 
vives ; he sets the cumulative outcome 
which gathers through the ages before 
your eyes in one dreadful stroke. The 
lying hypocrite falls dead in your presence, 
and the feet of the young men that have 
borne out his body wait at the door to 
bear away the body of his companion in 
sin. The highly favored city, exalted to 
heaven with privileges, goes tottling over 
into the nethermost hell, and the smoke of 
its torment rises black and hot up to heaven. 
The course and outcome of sin get dread- 



Christ AND the Sinner. 167 

ful emphasis in his dramatic portraiture ; 
it is the most dreadful thing in the uni- 
verse. The only way out of it is the way 
of repentance. It is a spiritual thing, an 
attitude of intellect, affections, and will ; 
and repentance means the taking on of a 
new attitude of intellect and will. In the 
nature of the case there can be no other 
way. 

The next step in Christ's way out of sin 
is faith in God as revealed in him. But in 
order to exercise this faith God must be so 
set before us as to give us grounds for the 
hope that we shall find our need supplied. 
If we think of God as " the Unknowable" 
we shall find ourselves unable to exercise 
faith in him, or it, as the case may be. 
We cannot turn to that of which we know 
and can know nothing, for the turning is 
a turning of thought to a new thought, of 
affection to a new affection, and of will to 
a new attitude of will. No such attitude 
is possible except as we believe ** that he 
is, and that he is a rewarder of them that 



1G8 Christianity and the Christ. 

diligently seek him." It is impossible for 
mind to worship matter, or for man to 
worship a thing while he conceives it to be 
a thing. The veriest heathen lifts his ob- 
ject of worship from thinghood and clothes 
it in his imagination with personal quali- 
ties. We cannot put ourselves into 
trustful relations with mere power. We 
may seek to learn its laws, and get out 
of its mad rush when it sweeps by in the 
liurricane or in the wild waves of desolating 
floods, but trust it we cannot. The ques- 
tion with the weary world is not how to 
get on w^ith " the stream of Tendency, not 
ourselves, that makes for righteousness," 
as Mr. Arnold puts it, but to find the 
personal God, who can and will have 
mercy upon the sinner. The whole history 
of the thousands of millions of hea- 
thenism shows, by its sacred literatures, 
its temples, its priests, its shrines, its sacred 
rivers, and endless pilgrimages that the 
human soul goes groaning on in its misery 
and groping on in its darkness, '^ feeling 



Christ and the Sinner. 169 

after God/' The ceaseless cry of the hu- 
man heart is, ** O that I knew where I 
might find him/' 

Filial faith, which alone can satisfy the 
soul, demands fatherly love. And this is 
just the revelation which Christ brings to 
us. The central theme of his Gospel is 
*^ God so loved the world." He came out 
from the Father's bosom to teach men of 
their royal blood, to recall to their minds 
the fact that they were created in the image 
of God. What the ideal in us demands, 
that he proclaims to be possible. A word 
of interpretation is needed as to the infer- 
ences to be made from this teaching. Does 
love mean, when applied to God, what it 
means when applied to man ? That has 
been disputed, but if love does not mean 
love it would be helpful if the objector 
would tell us what it does mean. Does it 
mean the opposite? What idea shall we 
connect with our revelation when we read, 
'' God is love " ? With what thoughts 
shall our minds be occupied when we kneel 



170 Christianity and the Christ. 

and say, ^^ Our Father?" The fact is, 
unless love mean love it can mean nothing, 
it becomes an utter blank ; our revelation 
is gone, and our God and Father are gone. 
Moreover, no other conception can meet 
the demands of our souls. A God indif- 
ferent to his creatures we could not trust ; 
a God that hated us we would not dare to 
trust ; the soul cries out from the ideal 
summits of its being for a God of love. 
But love means willingness to sacrifice for 
the beloved ; no other meaning is intelligi- 
ble. A God that is called ^^ Love " and 
'* Father," but would do nothing to save 
or help his children, may be spelled as 
above, but must be pronounced ^Mevil." 

Love, and sacrifice for the beloved, are 
in reality equivalent. The latter is love in 
action. Christ gives us in his doctrine of 
the Father just that for which the soul 
longs. God is eager, under the law of love, 
to put himself at cost for those whom he 
loves. There may be obstacles in the way 
of the display of this love; not every fa- 



Christ and the Sinner. 171 

ther can do for every son what he would 
Hke to do, as his favors may be turned to 
curses. That will depend on the son, but 
whatever our disabilities are, because of 
sin, they are provided for in the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and he stands before the 
race with outstretched hands, bringing 
from the Father the invitation, ^* Come 
unto me, all ye ends of the earth, and 
be ye saved.'* He offers forgiveness 
full and free, *^ Come, without money and 
without price/' The apostle goes so far 
as to say, ** Where sin abounded, grace did 
much more exceedingly." Christ weaves 
the Father's invitation into the matchless 
parables : the woman seeking the lost piece 
of silver, the shepherd out on the moun- 
tains ** cold and bare," seeking the lost and 
straying lamb ; the prodigal's father wait- 
ing and watching, seeking to descry in the 
dim distance the form of his wandering 
son. All these tell of love, and of love at 
cost for men. Did Christ overdo the truth ? 
Not if God is our Father. He is the me- 



172 Christianity and the Christ. 

diator of a new and better covenant. It 
stirs all the better nature of the man ; it 
shames him into penitence ; it warms him 
by its love ; it nourishes all his higher 
hopes ; it kindles his imagination and trans- 
mutes his awakened emotions into motives 
for holy deeds. One thing is sure, this 
Gospel meets the necessities of the sinner's 
desperate case. Could some competent 
representative of the whole class stand up 
to speak for them, we know quite well what 
would be the contents of his speech. He 
would ask for the knowledge of the love 
of God, for power to repent and believe, 
for the confirmation of the hope of immor- 
tality. These wants which he voices the 
Gospel has met. The only question is 
whether the sinner will make actual what 
God the Father, by his grace in Jesus 
Christ, has made possible. 



Christ and the Believer. 173 



CHAPTER IX. 

CHRIST AND THE BELIEVER. 

WE have seen that, according to the 
New Testament, Christianity is a 
spiritual life and that it affects the whole 
man — intellect, sensibilities, and will. We 
are now to inquire more particularly into 
this life in order to see its evidential value 
for our faith. The first question is. How 
do we know the experiences of the believ- 
er? The answer is, just as we know the 
experiences of the sinner. Man cannot 
keep his self-condemnation to himself. 
Every man feels that he is a sinner. 
There is a vague sense, too, while he strug- 
gles in the toils of this net, that he oiiglit 
not to be a sinner. Moreover, he feels that 
in this experience he is related to the high- 
er power or powers that rule in the uni- 
verse. At the other end of that relation 



174 Christianity and the Christ. 

is He to whom he must be reconciled, and 
with whom he must make his peace. In 
the Hght of the Gospel and in the presence 
of the compassionate and sinless Saviour 
this sense is greatly intensified. The burn- 
ing rays of the full-orbed Sun of right- 
eousness seem to be focused upon the soul ; 
there is not only light and fire in the con- 
science, but the light shines upon him to 
whom this obligation relates, and we are 
ready to say with Job, ** Now mine eye 
seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself." ^ 

We have spoken of this experience as 
showing itself in the feelings, but there is 
in it something more than feeling; there 
is a knowledge of the feeling and of our- 
selves as the subject of the feeling. Con- 
sciousness is the all-seeing eye of the soul 
by which Ave know with absolute certitude 
our thoughts, feelings, and volitions. Nor 
is this all. If we scrutinize carefully 
this feeling of obligation we shall find an 
intellectual activity that carries us directly 
* Job xlii, 5, 6. 



Christ and the Believer. 175 

and constantly on toward God. We did 
not give these moral ideals to ourselves ; 
we find them in ourselves waiting for rec- 
ognition. They rise up in us, or rather 
come down upon us out of an ideal world, 
and we cannot dispossess ourselves of 
them. The ideal of righteousness and the 
impulse of obligation which starts into ac- 
tion with that ideal urge us on with per- 
emptory command as surely as though 
sounded in trumpet-tones from smoking 
and blazing Sinai. When the voice of con- 
science sounds the temple of the soul is 
always open toward the stars, and the cul- 
prit instinctively whispers as he scans the 
heavens, ** It is the voice of the king.*' 

This account of the moral feelings, ac- 
companied by the cognitive act by which 
we know them and know them as our own, 
inseparable from that other intellectual act 
by which we are compelled to affirm our 
relation to God, ought to have its parallel 
in our Christian experience. If this expe- 
rience of the believer be real it will show 



176 Christianity and the Christ. 

itself in intellect, sensibility, and will, and 
and will necessitate a constant reference to 
God. It may be conceded that there is 
often too great emphasis put upon this 
emotional life ; that there is too little in- 
telligent thought and too little moral en- 
ergy. However, the peril among cultivated 
people is not that the emotional side of the 
religious life will be exaggerated, but sup- 
pressed, and so distort and stunt the whole 
spiritual life. Nevertheless, since religion 
is a matter of such transcendent interest, 
and since all experience appears in the 
realm of the feelings, and has no meaning 
or worth apart from the sensibilities, to the 
realm of feeling we must go for the most 
prominent facts connected with a believer's 
experience. 

The first great fact that demands atten- 
tion is that the believer finds peace x^a be- 
lieving. Paul's life is in evidence. The 
eighth chapter of Romans — and it illus- 
trates many other parts of his writings — 
shows that a great peace had taken posses- 



Christ and the Believer. 177 

sion of his soul. It was not the peace of 
moral stupor which comes to the soul 
when the conscience has become seared 
and is no longer sensitive to the call of 
duty. On the contrary, his conscience had 
been keenly alive, quickened to a distress- 
ing sensitiveness to moral obliquity. His 
peace, which was lifelong, must have been 
the peace which the soul enjoys when its 
deepest needs have been met. The essen- 
tial and ineradicable needs of the religious 
nature are at least two : man needs to be- 
lieve that his sins are forgiven, and to be 
able to call God his Father. To call him 
*' the Unknowable *' will not answer. To 
find him in nature or at Sinai as the great 
lawgiver, has no promise of peace. The 
psalmist tells us we may find him in '' the 
uttermost parts of the sea, ... in heaven,'* 
and '' in Slieol ; " ^ but it will be God the 
lawgiver, and not God our Father, The 
heart of man, however, yearns not for a law- 
giver, but a lover, a Father ; not for one that 

* Psalm cxxxix, 8, g. 
12 



173 Christianity and the Christ. 

can reward the righteous, but for one that 
will have mercy upon the sinner. These 
yearnings of Paul's soul w^ere satisfied. 
He found peace in believing in Jesus 
Christ. That peace spread over all the 
povvers of his soul, and there was a great 
calm there. If the eternal internal war 
did not cease it was waged with assurance 
of victory. From the hour when Paul met 
Jesus on the way to Damascus it is per- 
fectly clear that a harmonizing power, 
which promised an end of faction, began to 
work in his soul. It is perfectly clear, also, 
in all his epistles that this peace which 
promised an end to the feud between the 
old man and the new man in Christ Jesus 
was present in all his relations with men, 
in his thought of destiny, and his thought 
of God. 

But Paul does not tell his whole expe- 
rience in that somewhat passive word 
'^ peace." His experience was often one 
of overflowing, inexpressible joy. Listen 
to his song in the dark dungeon of Philippi 



Christ and the Believer. 179 

while the prison walls shake and the keeper 
trembles. Read his great prayer for the 
Ephesian Church where he thinks of God 
as '' able to do exceeding abundantly above 
all that we ask or think." ^ Hear him ex- 
horting the Philippians : ^' Finally, my 
brethren, rejoice in the Lord/* '* Re- 
joice in the Lord alway : again I will 
say, Rejoice." t And finally lift yourself 
to the height he has gained when, having 
fought the good fight and kept the faith, 
he is about to receive the '' crown of rejoic- 
ing " from the hand of him whom he has 
served even unto death. This, be it re- 
membered, was no fictitious joy put on for 
an occasion. He reveled in it on the per- 
ilous deep and in the dungeon. It was no 
weak sentiment, but as deep as life eternal. 
His soul was buoyant with it when he went 
to his trial and his death. Such was his 
joy in Christ that it was enough for him 
if Christ were preached, it mattered not 
whether by his life or his death. 

* Eph. iii, 20. f riiil. iii, i ; iv, 4. 



180 Christianity and the Christ. 

This experience is not exceptional. If 
we keep in mind those believers in whom 
the Gospel has had its most perfect work 
we may find hundreds of thousands along 
the centuries that have repeated it in all 
its essentials. Read the biographical rec- 
ord from Polycarp to Livingstone, dead 
upon his knees in distant Africa ; from 
Augustine to Edwards, a giant in intel- 
• lect and a rapt mystic in experience; from 
John, the beloved disciple, to John Wes- 
ley, the greatest apostle of the new life in 
modern times ; remember that these are 
but types of which there have been many 
representatives, and that this experience 
has characterized all, whether Calvinist or 
Arminian, Catholic or Protestant, and we 
have a most marvelous body of phenomena 
to be accounted for. 

We need not go so far away from home 
for the facts we have described. There 
are many limitations in the experience of 
the most of us. Our joy is mixed and our 
thought is confused. The Gospel does not 



Christ and the Believer. 181 

get full possession of us as it ought ; never- 
theless, every believer has known, with 
more or less clearness, something of the ex- 
perience w^hich the Pauls and the Wesleys 
delineate. He has had the consciousness 
of sin. Perhaps he has not been brought 
to the verge of despair and forced to cry 
out for deliverance as from the loathsome 
bondage of a dead body, but he has per- 
ceived with grief and self-accusation the 
contrast of what he has been and done 
with what he ought to have been and to 
have done ; and that is the process of con- 
viction of sin. In the light of the Gospel 
and in the presence of Jesus he has seen 
the meanness of his ideals, the sordid self- 
ishness of his motives, and has yearned 
for the life that is offered by the Saviour. 

Every believer knows something of the 
peace of which Paul speaks. In his best 
hours — when he most perfectly meets the 
gospel conditions — he can almost hear the 
voice of Jesus saying, *^ My peace I give 
unto you." The soul is awed and quieted 



182 Christianity and the Christ. 

and comforted, much as it is in the deep 
stiHness and solemn soUtude of the forest 
alone with nature's God. He feels as one 
might feel on charming Galilee, afloat with 
noiseless oar, while the stars look down 
upon him and whisper, '' Peace, not as the 
world giveth." In this hour of surrender 
to God through Jesus Christ, when con- 
ditions are at their best, when the distract- 
ing noise of the world and its empty babble 
are hushed, one feels again the return of 
childhood's days. The touch of a vanished 
hand is upon the brow ; the alien is at 
home in his Father's house. The world is 
beautiful and the sky is clear because the 
Master has said, '^ My peace I give unto 
you." Neither is this the only mood we 
have known. If the Gospel has had half a 
chance with us, we, too, have known the 
charming secret of divine love; and though 
our lips have been dumb, the harp of a 
thousand strings has been vibrant to heav- 
enly music, as though swept by angelic 
fingers. 



Christ and the Believer. 183 

We get the real content of Christian 
experience in the hymns of the Church. 
They set forth what the best representa- 
tives of the Gospel have known in their 
own lives, and what millions all along 
through the centuries have known, in in- 
termittent experiences, perhaps, and yet 
have known with such satisfaction and such 
certainty that they too sing of the highest 
and richest experiences with perfect assur- 
ance. They know that these hymns set 
forth what the Gospel may do and actually 
does for men. We need to listen, then, to 
the angels' song of ^' peace and good w^ill *' 
in the great congregation, when really 
stirred by the gospel hope ; we need to see 
the face of the old man rejoicing in the fact 
that he has lived in communion with Christ 
for sixty years, while the tears of joy roll 
down his cheeks and the deep emotion 
trembles in the tender pathos of his voice; 
we need to hear it from the favored rich, 
the abject poor, from the sleek Japanese, 
the stolid Chinaman, from the dark sons 



184 Christianity and the Christ. 

of Ham, and the world-conquering Anglo- 
Saxon, from the youthful Samuels and the 
aged Simeons, from all classes, conditions, 
and ages, living or dying, and then we 
need to join in the chorus ourselves in 
order to know the full meaning of this 
'* peace on earth," w^hich the angels sang 
on Bethlehem's plain. How shall we ac- 
count for these centuries of Christian song 
in which the millions have sought to ex- 
press their faith, their peace and joy, and 
their eternal hope? 

It is a noteworthy fact that every revival 
of this spiritual life is accompanied by a 
revival of song. The deeper experiences 
of the soul cannot be told in plain prose. 
John Wesley was the organizer of the 
great Methodist revival ; Richard Watson 
gave to its doctrines systematic statement ; 
John Fletcher elaborated for them a splen- 
did apologetic, and Adam Clarke became 
their commentator; but Charles Wesley did 
more, perhaps, by the hymns he wrote than 
either of the four to preserve and propa- 



Christ and the Believer. 185 

gate the new life. He clothed its naked 
and shivering form with the warm garments 
of poetry, and the great congregation have 
sung the new life into the hearts of the peo- 
ple. It is true *' the half was never told," 
but also true that we must forever be seek- 
ing to tell it, and the poet is the man to 
whom the divine gift has come that he may 
utter for us all, what our poor stammering 
tongues forever seek in vain to tell. He 
frames the flowing numbers which fit the 
glowing theme, and while we give it utter- 
ance the eye moistens, the face shines, the 
heart laughs, and the whole soul is aflame 
with a joy that is not of earth. 

We must now offer a final word in an- 
swer to the question how this life is sus- 
tained. Our emotions find their root and 
nourishment either in thought or in action 
which involves thought, and, in the case of 
the moral and religious emotions, in both. 
This joy and peace can only be sustained 
as they are rooted in a creed that is fitted 
to produce them and in action appropriate 



18G Christianity and the Christ. 

to them. What is Paul's thought at this 
point ? We may find it in the eighth chap- 
ter of Romans. He declares that to them 
that are in Christ Jesus there is now no 
condemnation, that the law of the spirit of 
life in Christ Jesus hath freed them from 
the law of sin and death ; that the power 
which wrought in the Lord Jesus to bring 
him again from the dead works in them 
also ; that they are heirs of God and joint 
heirs with Jesus Christ. They cherish the 
thought that their weak prayers are made 
potent at the throne of grace and mercy 
by the Spirit's intercessions, with groanings 
that cannot be uttered ; they remember 
that all things work together for good to 
them that love God ; that God is for them, 
and is more than all that can be against 
them. The above creed warrants his song 
of triumph : '* For I am persuaded, that nei- 
ther death, nor life, nor angels, nor principal- 
ities, nor things present, nor things to come, 
nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any 
other creature, shall be able to separate us 



Christ and the Believer. 187 

from the love of God, which is in Christ 
Jesus our Lord/'"^ 

This is the creed which supports the Hfe 
of every behever. When a man beUeves in 
Christ a new habit comes over his thought. 
He thinks of God as no longer offended, 
but as well pleased with him ; as having 
taken away the sting of his guilt. The 
fact of sin which hung like a black cloud 
between him and God, disturbing all the 
relations w^hich should obtain between a 
father and his child, making it impossible 
to think seriously and intelligently about 
God without thinking of him as offended, 
has been removed. He is able to put as 
never before, and does put into his thought 
of God, all that tender and delightful senti- 
ment with which the child clothes his 
thought concerning his father. God is 
for him and more than all that can be 
against him. 

The explanation of this new life is not 
merely a new system of thought. It is 

* Rom. viii, 38, 39. 



188 Christianity and the Christ. 

deeper than thought; it is the life of God 
in the soul. Paul is forever talking of the 
power that worketh in us. '' It is God which 
worketh in you both to will and to work." - 
He prays for the Ephesians that they may 
know *^ the riches of the glory of his 
[Christ's] inheritance in the saints, and 
what the exceeding greatness of his power 
to US-ward who believe, according to that 
working of the strength of his might which 
he wrought in Christ, when he raised him 
from the dead."f According to Paul the 
Gospel is the power of God ; faith is to 
stand by the power of God, and this power 
of God is Christ in us the hope of glory. 
He felt that in accepting Christ a new 
divine energy had taken possession of his 
being. And every Christian knows that 
when Christ has really been accepted there 
is set moving in him an energy that works 
against everything that is mean and self- 
ish and base, and makes for everything 
that is pure in thought and speech, help- 

* Phil, ii, 13. fEph. i, 18, 19. 



Christ and the Believer. 189 

ful and holy in action, noble and ideal in 
purpose. He knows that a new creation 
is stirring in all his powers. The intellect, 
the will, the emotions, the words, and the 
deeds begin to show forth the new, the 
ideal life. 

Why should this not be so? If the 
modern philosophy of the world be correct, 
and God really upholds all things by the 
word of his power ; if we really live and 
move and have our being in him ; if his 
voice be heard in the conscience ; if the 
facts we have seen in Israel's life and the 
grace and power we know to have charac- 
terized the life of Jesus do not all point 
to the explanation which Paul gives of this 
life, to what do they point ? 

In conclusion, we would emphasize the 
meaning of the religious ideals of the race. 
Man feels that by some means he must be 
brought to peace with God and into com- 
munion with him. Nineteen centuries of 
Christian song and millions of singers tes- 
tify that that ideal is realized in and 



190 Christianity and the Christ. 

through Jesus Christ. , Neither can this 
ideal be allowed to perish. There are 
many adverse facts which threaten this 
ideal, but it is mightier than all that has 
been against it. It, too, is a fact, and a 
fact which cannot be left out of considera- 
tion. Why has man insisted that this re- 
lation shall be realized ? There are plenty 
of experiences for which he has no expla- 
nation. He cannot understand the mean- 
ing of his poverty. It is true that riches 
are always a peril to the soul, but why not 
give him " neither poverty nor riches," for, 
indeed, poverty is also a snare and a peril ? 
He does not kno\v. He cannot explain 
why he should be tormented with pain, 
why opportunities should be denied him 
that are lavished upon and squandered by 
others ; why he should carry an open grave 
in his soul which the green of no spring- 
time can make beautiful. There are hints 
of meaning in all these desolations, but 
ultimately they have no explanation. They 
do not seem to fit his need nor to bespeak 



Christ and the Believer. 191 

the care of his Father. In his Christian 
experience, however, his ideals have been 
satisfied. He would not exchange it or 
modify it except to enrich it and give it 
wider sway. The man who would substi- 
tute anything in the universe, conceivable 
or inconceivable, for the love he bears his 
wife and children and the love he receives 
from them, does not know what love is ; 
and the man who would substitute any- 
thing in the universe for love to God and 
love from God does not know what the 
Christian experience is. There are some 
relations which cannot be improved. He 
believes his sins have been forgiven. The 
black cloud of guilt has been lifted. He 
can sing the song of redemption. The Fa- 
ther's voice is in his soul, and is an earnest 
of explanations yet to come. And the 
evidential value of these ideals satisfied, 
the fact that he knows himself to have 
found in promise and potency what he 
would perpetuate forever, and what he 
would that all men might share, is far more 



193 Christianity and the Christ. 

significant than any imaginable adverse 
facts. How shall we account for this river 
of joy which runs from Bethlehem through 
the centuries and swells in resistless vol- 
ume by our very doors, except as Paul ac- 
counts for it by his ^' Christ in you the 
hope of glory ? " ^ 

* Cul. i, 27. 



Christ and History. 193 



CHAPTER X. 

CHRIST AND HISTORY. 

'nr^HE argument for Christianity in this 
^ chapter is that to which Christ ap- 
pealed when John sent messengers from 
his prison cell to ask him, '' Art thou he 
that Cometh, or look we for another? " 
Christ's answer was: '* Go your way and 
tell John the things which ye do hear and 
see : the blind receive their sight, and the 
lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the 
deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and 
the poor have good tidings preached to 
them."^ It is an appeal to the achieve- 
ments of Christianity as recorded in his- 
tory. It is not necessary to play the 
prophet, for Christianity has been at work 
in nineteen centuries of history ; the record 
is before us, and we may read it for our- 

^Matt. xi. 5. 
13 



194 Christianity and the Christ. 

selves. We are obliged to limit our study 
to one phase of the subject, namely, to 
Christ's estimate of the individual. 

What was Christ's theory of man ? There 
is no formulated theory in the New Testa- 
ment, but a definite theory is very clearly 
implied in all Christ's teachings. He 
taught that man was made in the image 
of God, and that all men were brethren, 
children of a common father. He put no 
limitation upon the application of this 
theory to the last man and woman of the 
race; on the contrary, he fostered it and 
propagated it both by precept and exam- 
ple. There are some far-reaching philo- 
sophical implications in this doctrine. To 
be created in the image of God is to have 
reason, conscience, and will, and to be un- 
der obligations to use them, and to use them 
according to the divine plan. It is impossi- 
ble to suppose, therefore, that one moral 
being can own another. He cannot own 
his moral powers, for in the very nature 
of the case they are subject only to God. 



Christ and History. 195 

A man cannot submit even to the State or 
the Church if they command what he 
thinks God forbids. Neither can a man's 
bodily powers be owned by another, for it 
is only through the use of these powers 
according to his reason and conscience that 
the moral life can be developed. It is 
altogether conceivable that an inferior race 
might be so treated in slavery as to be 
helped on to moral maturity. But the 
Gospel would require every individual as 
he comes on into the realm of responsi- 
bility to take charge of his own life, to 
regulate all of his relations to his master by 
his own reason ; and that would render 
so-called ownership entirely meaningless. 
Such a system of slavery would require 
every master to help every individual on 
toward such maturity by every means pos- 
sible. He deals with a brother upon whom 
God has laid a command. No man, no 
institution, may be allowed to obstruct the 
way over which the hasting messenger of 
the king travels on the king's business. 



196 Christianity and the Christ. 

This is the unformulated philosophy which 
lies at the foundation of all Christ's teach- 
ing and is illustrated in all his life. 

If then this philosophy be correct, and 
if the power of God be really in this Gospel, 
slavery must go down before it. How has 
it worked? What was the promise of its 
success? What could be more unpromis- 
ing for the conquest of the world than the 
little squad of men and women to whom 
Christ gave the great command, ^* Go ye 
therefore, and make disciples of all the 
nations, baptizing them into the name of 
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
Ghost ?"^ What folly in the instruction 
given to the twelve chiefs, to whom the 
leadership for this conquest was committed. 
^^ Go,'* but *^ Get you no gold, nor silver, 
nor brass in your purses ; no wallet for 
your journey, neither two coats, nor shoes, 
nor staff: for the laborer is worthy of his 
food." ^ It was a motley group of leaders 
and an unpromising following for such an 
* Matt, xxviii, 19. f Matt, x, g, 10. 



Christ and History. 197 

appalling task. ^^ Four apostles were fish- 
ermen, one a petty tax collector, two hus- 
bandmen, one is said to have been a coach- 
man, and one a market gardener." ^ This 
description fits the case, whether strictly 
accurate or not. They were illiterate and 
unimportant men. 

It is not strange that Celsus in sheer 
mockery writes : ^' If a man be educated 
let him keep clear of us Christians ; we 
want no men of wisdom, no men of sense. 
We count all such as evil. No ; but if 
there be one who is inexperienced or 
stupid, or untaught, or a fool, let him 
come with good heart.'* Says Caecilius : 
*^ The greater part of you are worn with 
want, cold, toil, and famine ; men collected 
from the lowest dregs of the people ; igno- 
rant, credulous women ; '' and he contin- 
ues, '^ unpolished, boors, illiterate, ignorant 
even of the sordid arts of life ; they do 
not understand even civil matters ; how can 
they understand divine?'' According to 
* Newman's Grammar of Assent, p, 455. 



198 Christianity and the Christ. 

various fathers their religion ^' had the 
reputation of being an anile superstition, 
the discovery of old women, a joke, a 
madness, an infatuation, an absurdity, a 
fanaticism/' " This is no doubt an exag- 
geration, but it shows the prevalent idea 
as to the class whence the twelv^e came, 
the class to which they went, and with 
which they succeeded. 

And if anything more were needed to 
make the movement as seen upon the 
surface either a ludicrous farce — were it 
not too solemn — or an astounding fraud, it 
was provided in the fact that the leader 
and master had been crucified as a common 
culprit. And yet one is almost startled as 
he reads the pretentious claim set up in 
good bold letters above his cross, in He- 
brew and Greek and Latin, as though 
written for the eye of all men, " TJiis is 
Jesus the King of the Jews.'' f 

We only need to add to what has been 

* See Newman's Gramf?iar of Assent, p. 455. 
f Matt, xxvii, 37. 



Christ and History. 199 

said above that when Christ began to 
teach, slavery prevailed everywhere. In 
Attica the slave population was three 
times as large as the free, and in Italy 
the proportion was about the same ; 
the number at one time, according to Blair, 
rising to 20,832,000, while the free popu- 
lation numbered only 6,944,000. The hor- 
rible gladiatorial exhibitions and the cruel 
deaths to which the slaves were sometimes 
exposed, at the caprice of cruel masters, 
and for the most trivial faults, show how 
wretched was the condition of many of 
them. 

It is not to be denied that more humane 
sentiments are often found, nor that the 
Stoic philosophy fostered these senti- 
ments, but it was powerless as a remedy."^ 
The Stoics themselves lacked confidence in 
it as a regenerating power. Bossier says : 
'^ No ancient writer expresses either as a 
distant hope or as a fugitive desire, or even 
as an improbable hypothesis, the thought 

* See Uebervveg's History of Philosophy, vol. i, p. 195. 



200 Christianity and the Christ. 

that slavery might one day be aboh'shed." ^ 
The philosophy of the time lacked moral 
momentum. There was no divine com- 
mand and no conscience. These more 
humane sentiments needed to be reinforced 
by the doctrine of the fatherhood of God 
and the brotherhood of man. 

As soon as Christianity gets well into 
the field we begin to note its effects upon 
this evil. Paul sends Onesimus, a runaway 
slave, back to his master, but with the in- 
struction that he should be '^Tiore than a 
servant, a brother beloved." Paul adds 
further, ^' If then thou countest me a part- 
ner, receive him as myself.*' f '' As early 
as the year 119 A. D. we hear that 
Hermes, a prefect of Rome, being con- 
verted, presented twelve hundred and fifty 
slaves for baptism, all having been freed." ^ 
From this time on we find modifications 
going on in the law, making it more and 

^ See Uhlhorn's Conflict of Christianity with Hea- 
the7tism, p. 48 5. 

f Philem. 17. X Gesta Christi, p. 227. 



Christ and History. 201 

more easy to free a slave. The Day of the 
Lord became known as a day especially 
appropriate for the emancipation of slaves. 
A decided change in sentiment begins to 
be apparent in the early part of the second 
century. In 314 A. D. liberty was de- 
clared to be a right which could not be 
taken away; in 316 A. D. Constantine 
writes to an archbishop as follows : '* It has 
pleased me for a long time to establish 
that in the Christian Church masters can 
give liberty to their slaves.** It is clearly 
evident that a new life has taken posses- 
sion of the world. The great jurist Henry 
Sumner Maine writes in his Ancient Laws 
of the changes at work as follows : "' We 
have in the annals of Roman law a nearly 
complete history of the crumbling away of 
an archaic system and of the formation of 
new institutions from the recombined 
materials. . . . When we leave this jurispru- 
dence at the epoch of its final reconstruc- 
tion by Justinian (in the sixth century) 
few traces of archaism can be discovered 



202 Christianity and the Christ. 

in any part of it except in the single 
article of the extensive powers still re- 
served to the living parent. Everywhere 
else principles of convenience or of symme- 
try or simplification — new principles at any 
rate — have usurped the authority of the 
jejune considerations which satisfied the 
conscience of ancient times. Everywhere 
a new morality has displaced the canons of 
conduct and the reasons of acquiescence 
which were in unison with the ancient 
usages, because in fact they were born of 
them."- 

This gospel which teaches the supreme 
value of man steadily gathers momentum 
with the progress of the centuries. Could 
we trace the subtle influences of thought 
which have outlawed slavery, and see the 
invisible whip of small cords with which it 
is being driven from the face of the earth, 
we should see that its every lash is fibered 
with the gospel of the good Samaritan. 
The conscience which gives nerve to the 

* Maine's Aticient Lazus, pp. 162, 163. 



Christ and History. 203 

arm that wields it has its hot indignation 
from the altar where burns the twin gospel 
truths, the fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of man. 

In concluding this point we need to re- 
member that with this influence which has 
freed the slave and lifted him to the level 
of manhood have gone forward many 
other beneficent movements. The dread- 
ful corruption which threatened the life of 
Rome has been mitigated ; woman has 
been lifted from the degradation of ante- 
Christian times, and the cruel gladiatorial 
sports have been left far behind. The 
world IS a far better world to-day because 
of the new gospel of man. If it be asked 
why the result has come so slowly the 
answer is because every advance has to be 
wrought out through men. Great moral 
ideals must be realized in the lives of 
great moral heroes and then spread abroad 
in the life of the people. Moral ideals 
cannot be put either upon the individual 
or the race. They are nothing to either, 



204 Chrtstiaxttv and the Christ. 

except as they work them out in Hfe, grow 
them into, and conserve them by, great 
institutions. If men are deaf to the divine 
call, slow to perceive and slower to re- 
spond, the progress of the Gospel will be 
correspondingly slow. If, however, they 
lend a listening ear, if they are quick to 
see and courageous to respond, so much 
the more rapidly will the cause advance 
toward the goal. It is to be remembered 
that God works through us. 

In the period of the Reformation we 
have another illustration of the emphasis 
which the Gospel puts upon the individ- 
ual. We have seen it working for the 
emancipation of the body, but always in 
the interest of the soul. In the Reforma- 
tion it is seen at work for the emancipation 
of the mind. The freedom which springs 
so naturally from the Gospel tiad been 
sacrificed to ecclesiastical authority. The 
rights of reason in matters of doctrine had 
been denied to the individual on philo- 
sophic grounds. The claim had been set 



Christ and History. 205 

up that the truths of revelation are not 
accessible to human reason ; indeed, they 
may be contradictory to reason. The 
believer is to accept them on the authority 
of the Church. God has communicated 
them to the Church and authorized her to 
teach them.^ If this be true, the indi- 
vidual is at the mercy of the Church, 
whatever she may teach. It is her busi- 
ness to teach, his to obey and ask no ques- 
tions. 

Neither was this merely a theory. It 
was put into practice in the conflict be- 
tween the Church and the State. For 
many years this conflict had gone on until 
at length Gregory the Great — elected to 
the papacy 1073 A. D. — determined to 
take the bold step which should make him 
secure in his authority over the Church 
and the State. The question which was 
at issue was, Who should present the sym- 
bol of office to a bishop when appointed to 

* See Ueberweg's History of Philosophy^ vol . i, pp. 
452, 460. 



206 Christianity and the Christ. 

his episcopate? The princes had done 
this, but it was evidently a usurpation of 
prerogatives which did not belong to 
them. He forbade this and came imme- 
diately into conflict with Henry IV, Em- 
peror of Germany. Never up to this time 
had any pope expressly asserted that an 
emperor was amenable to an ecclesiastical 
tribunal for such ecclesiastical offenses as 
those of which Henry had been guilty. 
Gregory not only summoned him to Rome, 
but excommunicated him from the Church 
and absolved his subjects from their fealty. 
Many of them feared to support him. 
That anathema of the pope, the vicar of 
Christ on earth, clung to him like a dread 
disease, a veritable leprosy, tainting the 
atmosphere about him and threatening 
all who befriended him. He thought to 
better his condition by seeking the for- 
giveness of the pope. Gregory had retired 
to an old castle at Canossa which was sur- 
rounded by a triple wall. Henry made 
his way with few attendants in an inclem- 



Christ and History. 207 

ent winter, over unfrequented roads — • 
the ordinary passes were guarded by his 
enemies — to Canossa. " In penitential 
garments, with his feet and head bare and 
unsheltered from the season, the emperor 
presented himself at the gate of the for- 
tress as a sinner and a suppliant. His 
humble request was to be admitted to the 
presence of the pontiff and to receive his 
absolution. For three dreary days from 
dawn till sunset the proudest sovereign in 
Europe was condemned to continue his 
fast and his penance before the walls and 
probably under the eyes of Gregory in 
solitary and helpless humiliation." ^ He 
did not even then get the restoration of 
his title of royalty. This bit of history 
shows that it was no mock authority which 
the pope proposed to exercise over the 
State. It was a denial of all real freedom 
to the State. 

Neither was religious freedom allowed 
to the individual. In the twelfth century 

* See Waddingtoii's CJnirch Histo^y^ p. 239. 



20S Christianity and the Christ. - 

Peter Waldo assumed the right to study 
the Bible and proclaim its truths. He was 
forbidden to preach, and the interdict was 
enforced by persecution. It was one of 
these massacres which inspired Milton's 
prayer : 

" Avenge, O Lord ! thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ; 
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, 
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones ; 
Forget not : in thy book record their groans." 

Huss went up to Constance to be 
burned for his faith. Wycliffe dared to 
promulgate the principles of the Reforma- 
tion in England ; he died a peaceful death, 
but the Council of Constance ordered his 
body and bones to be taken up and 
^^ thrown far away from the burial of any 
church." Savonarola was likewise burned 
and his ashes cast into the Arno. The 
fires of persecution which kindled about 
the bodies of these martyrs set forth the 
animus of the Church toward all who 
dared to dissent from the teaching of the 



Christ and History. 209 

Church. The principle was, beheve and 
Hve, dissent and burn. 

An age sometimes gets itself incarnated 
in a single individual ; his tongue is 
touched by its fire, and his deeds make lu- 
minous its spirit. It took three men, 
giants of wrath and crime, to express the 
chaotic barbaric spirit of the French Revo- 
lution — Marat, Robespierre, and Danton ; 
but Martin Luther is a whole reformation 
in and of himself. The whole age is made 
luminous by the light that shines in his 
face. Behold him as he stands in the 
presence of the most notable assemblage 
of his time at the Diet of Worms. There 
sat the emperor, six princes, twenty-eight 
dukes, thirty prelates, surrounded by other 
dignitaries of the Church and State, num- 
bering two hundred in all. Thousands of 
people thronged the halls and streets. 
There were Luther's books upon the table ; 
there sat the two papal legates, Marino 
Caraccioli and Jerome Alexander; there 

was John Van Eck, Chancellor of the Arch- 
14 



210 Christianity and the Christ. 

bishop of Treves, waiting to ask whether 
Luther acknowledged these books and 
would recant their teaching. One trem- 
bles as he sees the lone monk enter that 
hall to stand apparently alone for Protes- 
tantism. But w^e need not tremble. Lu- 
ther knew the truth of his cause ; he had 
gone back to the Bible, and he made his 
stand behind it. He said : '' Bring testi- 
mony against me, prove by prophetic and 
apostolic Scripture that I have erred. 
Unless I am convicted I will recant noth- 
ing. Here I stand. I can do no otherwise. 
God help me. Amen ! ""^ 

It is a question of fre^om again, this 
time not of the body but of the mind. 
There are many mighty forces at work to 
lift the individual and confirm the rights 
of the man. The cultivation of Greek 
philosophy ; the revelations of the tele- 
scope which destroyed Church authority in 
matters of science ; the discovery of the 
New World and the demand for men of 

* Hagenbach's History of the Reformation^ vol. i, p. 137. 



Christ and History. 211 

strength ; the multipHcation of ambitious 
and powerful princes who would not toler- 
ate dictation ; the restless and resistless 
energy of the new blood infused into the 
veins of the age from the conversion and 
influx of the barbarians — all these forces 
are to be recognized as primal forces 
which wrought for the independence of the 
individual, and, like Titans of old, bore 
aloft upon their brawny shoulders the stal- 
wart civilization. But the center of the 
movement was the right of a man to find 
a reason for his own faith ; and the man 
that stood for all the forces at the center 
was Martin Luther, who refreshed his giant 
strength at the original fountain, the word 
of God. Into the weltering chaos of 
spiritual forces came this man. In him the 
struggling cause of the Reformation found 
a voice. It is said that a voice is sufficient 
at times upon an Alpine height to send 
the poised avalanche on its dread mis- 
sion down the mountain-side into the val- 
ley. It only needed a voice potent with 



212 Christianity and the Christ. 

divine authority to set free all the forces 
of the new age. It was given to Luther 
to utter that voice, and it was heard in 
every village and household of the land. 
It spoke into being a new civilization. 
Nations began to organize around a new 
center. William, Prince of Orange, fought 
out the issue with the Duke of Alva in the 
Dutch Republic, and won victory for the 
Reformation there. The cause spread in 
France and Italy, Bohemia, Switzerland, 
Scotland, and England. The great uni- 
versities arose to carry forward the general 
intellectual advance. No one can say to 
what extent the outcome was favored by 
other agencies, but it is perfectly clear 
that the movement was preeminently a 
religious movement, and that the freedom 
of faith was the inspiring recreative princi- 
ple which wrought in every direction, in 
Hterature and schools, in peace and war, 
in the Church and the State, toward the 
sublime end achieved in modern European 
civilization. 



Christ and History. 213 

We are not to suppose that the whole 
content of the gospel idea of man was 
worked out in Luther^s time. The Gospel 
proposes the spiritual transformation of 
the individual and his deliverance from the 
bondage of sin. We are still engaged in 
that task. We have seen its more prom- 
inent features in the chapters on ^' Christ 
and the Sinner," and *^ Christ and the Be- 
liever." But it is worthy of notice that in 
the life and work of John Wesley the indi- 
vidual again comes to the front and exhib- 
its anew the power of the Christ in history. 

The story of his life is a familiar one. 
He was always full of zeal for God and pro- 
lific of missionary enterprises ; but his.zeal 
needed to be tempered and his spirit en- 
riched by the baptism and deliverance that 
came to him one evening in May, 1738, in 
a little Moravian prayer meeting. Of that 
hour he writes : '' I felt my heart strangely 
warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ 
alone for salvation ; and an assurance was 
given me that he had taken away my sins, 



214 Chris'haxitv and the Christ. 

even mine, and saved me from the law of 
sin and death." And from that experience 
dates the work of the greatest revivalist the 
world has known and the greatest revival 
the Church has seen. To estimate this 
new development of the Reformation prin- 
ciple, one would need not only to number 
the followers of Wesley in all lands, but 
also to estimate the new impetus given to 
spiritual life in all Christendom ; to trace 
the subtle influences of this life in litera- 
ture and education ; to look with prophetic 
insight into all modern missionary move- 
ments, with the growing purpose that every 
man and woman of the race shall have the 
Gospel. The cumulative results of Christ's 
idea of man we cannot measure. We 
know, however, that it rolls its current of 
hope and love in vaster volume, that it 
gathers more resistless momentum with 
each succeeding century, and promises to 
fill the whole earth with its fructifying 
rivers of gospel grace. 

In his Ancie7it Law, Maine says : " Start- 



Christ and History. 215 

ing as from one terminus of history, from 
a condition of society in which all the rela- 
tions of persons are summed up in the rela- 
tions of family, we seem to have steadily 
moved toward a phase of social order in 
which all these relations arise from the free 
agreement of individuals/' And again he 
says : ^* The individual is steadily substi- 
tuted for the family, as the unit of which 
civil laws take account." ^ This great jurist 
comes to this conclusion from a study of 
the modifications made in the forms of 
law. Another writer f comes to the same 
conclusion from a study of social evolution. 
Fiske affirms that the outcome of human 
progress will be the prevalence of the Spirit 
of Christ '^ throughout the length and 
breadth of the earth.*':}: And Benjamin 
Kidd shows that the central feature in this 
progress is religious faith. 

These studies lead us back to the head- 

* Maine's Ancieitt Law, p. 163. 

f Benjamin Kidd's Social Evolution^ p. 53. 

X Fiske's The Idea of God^ p. 163. 



216 'Christianity and the Christ. 

ing of this chapter, '"Christ in History." 
He outdoes all theorists in his estimate of 
the individual, and by it he is conquering 
the world. We may now recall the words 
of Celsus again. He points the finger of 
scorn at the early disciples and says : '' Un- 
polished boors, illiterate, ignorant men." 
And we may read in connection with them 
the words of the great commission, '" Go 
ye therefore and make disciples of all na- 
tions." We need not play the prophet ; 
we have only to read history. How shall 
we estimate the ^'therefore" of that com- 
mission in the light of the centuries of gos- 
pel achievement ? 



Christ and Humanity. 217 



CHAPTER XL 

CHRIST AND HUMANITY. 

IN the nature of the case there can be 
but one true religion. There can be 
but one true science of geology, astron- 
omy, ethics, or logic. The true system of 
astronomy is the one that explains the 
facts. There may be several theories, and 
each may have some elements of truth, but 
when that astronomer appears who is to 
construct the ultimate science he will take 
up into his theory all the elements of truth 
in all other theories, and from his own 
point of view will construct the true and 
final system of astronomy. The same 
must be true of geology, of ethics, of logic, 
and of all other sciences. This illustrates 
what may be expected in the field of reli- 
gion. There can be but one true religion, 
and that one must cover all the essential 



218 Christianity and the Christ. 

relations between man and God. If those 
relations could be truly discerned we 
should have a final anthropology and a 
final theology. 

Christianity claims to be that ultimate 
religion. The prophets anticipated the 
universal reign of the Messiah. They 
foresaw that of which the psalmist sang, 
^'Ask of me, and I will give thee the 
nations for thine inheritance, and the ut- 
termost parts of the earth for thy posses- 
sion ; " "^ or again, ^^ Yea, all kings shall 
fall down before him : all nations shall 
serve him.'* f 

The New Testament makes the same 
assumption. The Gospel summons all 
men to repentance ; it is to be preached to 
all ; all are to be raised from the dead and 
all are to be judged. The great commis- 
sion contemplates the discipling of all 
nations, and the baptism of the Spirit was 
to qualify the witnesses to bear testimony 
unto the uttermost parts of the earth. 

■^ Psalm ii, 8. f Psalm Ixxii, ii. 



Christ and Humanity. 219 

Christ himself says, '' And I, if I be Hfted 
up from the earth, will draw all men unto 
myself;""^ and if we look through the 
anointed eyes of the New Testament proph- 
et we shall see Christ enthroned at last, 
and all the millions of the nations under 
the sway of his scepter. 

What is there to justify this hope? We 
offer a resume oi the evidence and leave the 
elaboration of the points to the reader. 
Christ offers a system of doctrine that is 
strikingly simple and rational. His doc- 
trine of sin is true to the facts in the 
case. It is verified in the consciousness 
of every man. His doctrine of responsi- 
bility is entirely rational. There can be 
no moral life apart from freedom. Free- 
dom and moral responsibility involve each 
other and stand or fall together. Con- 
sciousness again becomes a witness to our 
freedom by its testimony to our responsi- 
bility, our merit or demerit. The doctrine 
of forgiveness is demanded by the race. 
*John xii, 32. 



220 Christianity and the Christ. 

The millions of the vast heathenisms to- 
day are conscious of their need, and are 
seeking in manifold ways to put away 
their sins. The doctrine of regeneration 
is demanded by the perverted and de- 
praved nature in which sin thrives so 
abundantly. The very fountain of life 
seems to have been tainted. No dusty 
pilgrimages, no tortures of the body, no 
blood of bulls or of goats, no genuflections 
or incantations of white-robed priest can 
remove the taint. It is dark enough to 
blacken all the seas. Only the touch 
creative can remove the taint and cleanse 
the spiritual life-current. The doctrine of 
the atonement has also a rational root. 
No sinner feels easy in presence of his sins 
and his God. He is forever hiding the one 
or hiding from the other. The atonement 
teaches that in some way Christ has re- 
moved this difficulty and brought us near 
to God in peace. We need not form a 
theory, either moral, governmental, or 
expiatory. But we may come ''just as 



Christ and Humanity. 221 

we are '' and be reconciled to God. The 
doctrine of the Spirit is rational. The 
revelation began externally, but man's 
need is internal. His moral judgments 
are obscure and perverted ; his desires are 
earthly and sensual, and his will is obdu- 
rate. Wherever the divine communication 
may begin, whether in promises to Abra- 
ham, deliverances from Egypt, in bellowing 
thunder above Mount Sinai, or miracles of 
healing by the Christ, it will be a failure 
unless its culmination is a manifestation of 
the Spirit in this inner life. Here the evil 
is intrenched, and here the Spirit must 
come to abide. Such a culmination is 
eminently rational. The fatherhood of God, 
the brotherhood of man, and the hope of 
immortality are doctrines supported by 
our ideals since these ideals cannot be real- 
ized without them, and they complete a 
scheme of thought consistent with the 
unique character of him who revealed 
these truths to the fishermen along the 
shores of the blue and beautiful Galilee. 



222 Christianity and the Christ. 

Tlic conquest Christianity has made of 
the barbaric races of Europe shows what it 
can do. Its hold upon the Anglo-Saxon 
race is significant, for the Anglo-Saxon 
is becoming the conqueror of the world. 
Numbering only six millions in 1700 and 
one hundred millions in 1880, and having 
taken possession of a third of the earth 
during this period, it will not be likely to 
lose its disposition to rule when it mar- 
shals its hundreds of millions on the rich 
plains and in the fertile valleys and thrifty 
marts of trade of all the Oriental world. 
It is the bearer of the best blood, of the 
highest courage, and of the most aggressive 
spirit of the age, and is also the chief rep- 
resentative of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.* 

Its agencies already in the field are ade- 
quate to bear the good news to the utter- 
most parts of the earth, and that, too, in a 
single generation. Number the mission- 
ary societies and study the success of the 
last ten years. Count the schools and the 
^ See Strong's Our Countjy, pp. 162-165. 



Christ and Humanity. 223 

literature devoted to the one work. Esti- 
mate the meaning of the rise and organiza- 
tion of all the young people's associations 
for Christian work — the Young Men's 
Christian Association, numbering more 
than a quarter of a million ; the Young 
People's Society of Christian Endeavor, 
numbering a million ; the Epworth League, 
numbering more than half a million, and 
add to these a score of smaller organiza- 
tions all in training for Christian propa- 
gandism, and it seems as though the army 
was already in the field which would carry 
the cross to the ends of the earth. 

The awakening of the Church to the task 
of saving our cities shows that the dew of 
eternal youth is yet upon the Gospel. We 
have come clearly to recognize the fact 
that the Gospel must regenerate the con- 
ditions under which men live. The city 
missionary enterprises, the industrial 
schools, boys' clubs, and college and uni- 
versity settlements all show that, whereas 
the downtown communities have been 



224 Christianity and the Christ. 

partially abandoned by the Churches, and 
the people left to the cumulative evils of 
immigration, saloons, poverty, ignorance, 
and infamy, the Church is sending back 
again from her own heart her best life 
blood. The redemptive agencies are mul- 
tiplying in these dark places, and that, too, 
under the inspiring influences of the Gos- 
pel. The Gospel must purify these foun- 
tains of iniquity — streets, alleys, tenements, 
sewers — the whole environment must be 
changed for the sake of the souls of men. 
The clear consciousness of the problem 
and the returning currents of life are full 
of promise. The Church, too, must carry 
the Gospel into all the problems of the 
times, until strife and passion shall cease. 
There is no principle that can settle the 
conflict of classes except the principle of 
human brotherhood and the recognition of 
the obligations that go with it. Christian- 
ity is to be put to the test in these conflicts 
as never before. We are to solve them 
here for the world. They will reappear in 



Christ and Humanity. 225 

all the long centuries among the vast pop- 
ulations of the East after the uplifting 
power of the Gospel has been felt and the 
start for manhood has been really made. 
But how significant will be the fact for 
them if Christianity has grappled w^ith 
these problems and found their solution 
here in this Western world ! 

But the larger problem is yet before us : 
What of the relation of Christianity to the 
millions of heathenism ? When we re- 
member that the great Messianic tragedy 
occurred on Mount Calvary ; that one of 
Africa's sons, Simon the Cyrenian, was an 
actor in that tragedy, and that Matthew 
actually preached the Gospel in Africa, we 
might have expected that the light would 
have penetrated the midnight of the Dark 
Continent, and that the jubilant bells of the 
gospel day would long since have struck 
the high noon of Christian civilization in 
Africa. When we remember that Barthol- 
omew preached in India and Philip in up- 
per Asia we might have prophesied the 
15 



226 Christianity and the Christ. 

early dawn of the day of deliverance for 
all the Orient. But the seed did not 
take root and propagate itself. In spite 
of the fact that there is no power in this 
world so ambitious of universal empire 
as the Gospel, and in spite of the fact that 
the gospel Teacher lived and the great 
tragedy was enacted almost within hearing 
of these millions, still at the dawn of the 
nineteenth century the untaught multi- 
tudes might have been seen marching 
steadily on to the future, no ray of gospel 
light having fallen upon them ; the naked 
millions reveling in their savage rites and 
the roll-call of Protestantism showing 
scarcely a Gideon*s band among them. 
While we read we know that the swelter- 
ing multitudes of China, loaded with the 
cumulative conservatism of forty centuries, 
are still bound to a dead past ; that the 
millions of India, because of idolatry and 
caste, have been more inaccessible than as 
though separated by intervening mountain 
ranges or vast oceans ; that the millions 



Christ and Humanity. 327 

of Japan now stand only in the dawn of 
the light that is to lighten the Gentiles, 
not yet having shaken off the slumber of 
the night, not quite clear whether they 
dream or wake ; that the swarthy millions 
of Africa and the islands of the sea are still 
deep down in the inaccessible valleys of 
superstition and native barbarism, where 
the Sun of righteousness has never yet 
sent one struggling ray. 

In the light of these facts we may well 
ask whether Christianity is to be equal to 
this appalling task? If it be not of God, 
no. If it be, ^^ He shall not fail nor be dis- 
couraged, till he have set judgment in the 
earth ; and the isles shall wait for his 
law.'' * 

It may be assumed that any religion 
that is to finally meet the wants of the 
race and so become universal must meet 
and satisfy the religious ideals which are 
imbedded in human nature and are essen- 
tially constitutive of that nature. Just as 

* Isa. xlii, 4. 



228 Christianity and the Christ. 

in the realm of nature the reason insists 
that its ideals of law and order — in other 
words, of rationality — shall be found; just 
as it never hesitates, but modifies and re- 
constructs its failing hypotheses to explain 
the facts, assured that they must be found 
to be rational, so in the realm of morals 
and religion is there a set of principles or 
ideals which we cannot suffer to be invali- 
dated. The demand of the reason for 
their realization is ?. fact that must be put 
into the scales, and a fact that outweighs 
all adverse facts. 

It may be affirmed with confidence that 
the ethnic religions are failing to meet 
these demands of human nature. Seen in 
the light of historic perspective their fail- 
ure is evident. We find man everywhere 
seeking to relate himself to the higher 
powers, and he may thus be said to have 
always .believed in God. When you catch 
sight of the first man in the dawn of his- 
tory you find him to be a religious being. 
Paul finds the Athenians with an altar to 



Christ and Humanity. 229 

The Unknown God, A French traveler 
tells us of his conversation with a Kafifir 
concerning the Christian religion : ** Your 
tidings/' said this uncultivated barbarian, 
'' are what I want, and I was seeking before 
I knew you, as you shall hear and judge for 
yourself. Twelve years ago I went to 
feed my flocks ; the weather was hazy. I 
sat upon a rock and asked myself sorrow- 
ful questions; yes, sorrowful, because I 
was unable to answer them. Who has 
touched the stars with his hands; on what 
pillars do they rest ? I asked myself. The 
waters never weary, they know no other 
law than to flow without ceasing from 
morning till night, and from night till 
morning ; but where do they stop and who 
makes them flow thus ? The clouds also 
come and go and burst in water over 
the earth. Whence come they ; who 
sends them ? . . . Do I know how the 
corn sprouts? Yesterday there was not 
a blade in my field, to-day I returned to 
the field and found some ; who can have 



230 Christianity and the Christ. 

given to the earth the wisdom and the 
power to produce it ? Then I buried my 
head in both my hands/' ^ This is human 
nature apart from special revelation at its 
devotions. The race has always believed 
in God, but it has never been satisfied with 
its belief. 

The Pantheon, the temple of all the gods 
at Rome, was stripped of its ornaments 
centuries ago. The gods once honored 
there had long before been despoiled of 
their glory and abandoned. The Parthe- 
non, resplendent with Pentelic marble, the 
product of the genius of Pericles and Icti- 
nus, glorified with the statue of Athena 
Parthenos, the work of Phidias, has been 
robbed of its treasures; they have gone to 
enrich the different capitals of Europe. 
Where now is the Egyptian Osiris, the 
Greek Zeus, the Roman Jupiter? Gone, 
and gone forever. Where the Aztec gods 
of three centuries ago ? Gone forever. 
Where Vishnu and Siva and the other 

* Quoted by Pictou in The 'Mystery of Matter, p. 122. 



Christ and Humanity. 231 

gods of the Hindoo Pantheon? Going, 
and going forever. Neither the venera- 
tion for age nor the sacred surroundings 
of the temple ; neither isolation nor mys- 
tery ; neither pomp of ritual nor the walls 
of caste nor any other wall can save these 
Pantheons from the fate of all that have 
gone before them. They are all gray with 
age, and in their helpless decrepitude they 
go tottering down into the grave of a 
common oblivion. Civilizations have risen 
around them like tides of the ocean, and 
yet unlike the tides of ocean, in that every 
drop has been a living soul, and every soul 
a sensitive spirit, and every spirit has 
touched the cold stony forms of these gods 
and has shrunk shivering from the touch. 
Having asked for bread it received a stone. 
The great deep of civilization recedes and 
leaves its Pantheons to the relic hunter, 
leaves its temples desolate, its gods of 
wood and stone like sphinxes standing 
solitary and sullen, at the mercy of the 
iconoclast and the tooth of time. The 



232 Christianity and the Christ. 

Elijahs of modern times pass by, and the 
remaining fanatical devotees cry, '' O Baal, 
hear us ! '* But the warm life has slipped 
away from the cold forms, and the stony 
stare of death is in their eyes. They do 
not meet the demands of the growing re- 
ligious ideals. 

So must the philosophic monsters called 
gods up and begone. Positivism, which 
sets up humanity as its idol, cannot meet 
the needs of the soul. What is humanity 
but an abstract notion made up of the in- 
dividual units of the race ? Ideal humanity 
may never arrive. It does not actually 
exist, and it may well be doubted whether 
it ever will exist if God be left out of the 
case ; and even if it should, no one of us 
will be present to see it. We can consent 
to be icsed^ but we can never consent to be 
used tip ; \yq shall not grow spiritually rich 
while we worship either actual humanity, 
grimy and ruined, helpless and sick, as it 
is ; nor will our eyes stand out with fatness 
while we pretend to worship that thin ab- 



Christ and Humanity. 233 

straction known as ideal humanity. It 
cannot satisfy the ideals of our religious 
nature. 

The great ethnic religions fail either in 
their theory of man or of God. Brahman- 
ism, with its keen appreciation of the im- 
manence of the power over all and in all 
being, confuses and loses both the per- 
sonality of God and the hope of the 
permanent personal life of man. Bud- 
dhism, with its many attractive moral pre- 
cepts, has no God."^ It lacks motive power. 
Islamism gives us a god, but he is a god 
of whom we can only sing, ** This awful 
god is ours.'* It sounds forever one note, 
namely, submission to an absolute power.f 
These and other religious faiths have served 
a wise purpose. They have kept the re- 
ligious nature alive and active, waiting 
the time when ** the desire of all nations 
shall come '' to supplement their truth and 

* Monier Williams's Buddhism, p. 153. 
■(•Carpenter's The Permanent Elejnents in Religion, 
pp. 78-86, 370. 



234 Christianity and the Christ. 

satisfy the hungry and thirsty miUionswho 
wait for that advent. 

James Freeman Clarke has given us a 
very apt thought as to the relation of 
Christianity to the other religions of the 
world. It is that each of the ethnic reli- 
gions has some important truth, but also 
some mortal defect. Christianity has all 
these truths and none of these defects ; it 
has \\\^ fullness of truth, and can therefore 
meet and supply what is lacking in each. 
It can give to the Brahman immortality 
for his doctrine of absorption, and a per- 
sonal God for his intangible Pantheism. 
With the Buddhist, who has a strong grasp 
upon the doctrine that a man's acts will 
meet him again, the Christian can agree, 
remembering that " whatsoever a man sow- 
eth, that shall he also reap," and can add the 
comforting faith in a heavenly Father who 
cares for every child of the race. The faith 
of Christianity differs from that of Moham- 
medanism in that it provides for commun- 
ion. God comes down to guide and to 



Christ and Humanity. 235 

bless. It thus supplies a defect in Moham- 
medanism. The same capacity to meet 
the defects of the other ethnic reHgions is 
evident. '' Christianity has thus shown it- 
self to be a universal solvent, capable of 
receiving into itself the existing truths of 
the ethnic religions, and fulfilling them 
with something higher. Whenever it has 
come in contact with natural religion it 
has assimilated it and elevated it. This is 
one evidence that it is intended to become 
the universal religion of miankind.**^ That 
teaching of Jesus recorded in John xiv, i, 
'* Ye believe in God, believe also in me," 
was either a most audacious assumption 
or the most profound truth. If Jesus really 
came from God, and was the Incarnate 
Logos, he may consistently add to the be- 
lief in God, ** believe also in me." He will 
make good his claim by satisfying the reli- 
gious ideals of human nature. 

There is a kind of divinity in man him- 
self. He is divine enough to recognize the 

* James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religiotis, p. 504. 



236 Christianity and the Christ. 

God he seeks when he finds him. There 
is something in man that demands the 
perfect, the eternal. We live in a world 
full of imperfection ; it is found in every 
flower and leaf, in every life and every 
man ; it is conspicuous in the cradle and 
the cemetery, and at every step of the 
way between. We are in the midst of it, 
and, to a limited extent, of it, and yet we 
are above it. Something works in us the 
thought of the true, of the absolutely true, 
the eternally true, and we cannot rest. No 
sooner do we find that the principles are 
false which we have held to be true, than, 
lifted as by an irresistible impulse, we 
rise to assert and seek the perfectly true. 
Something works in us the sense of the 
beautiful. A daub may satisfy us to-day, 
a mediocre to-morrow, but it takes a mas- 
terpiece the next day, and on the follow- 
ing we move on toward the ideal, which 
the imagination constructs of cloud and 
color and form ** that never was on sea or 
land.'V 



Christ and Humanity. 237 

Man's religious nature works under the 
same law. His religious ideals demand 
that his sins be forgiven ; he cannot 
rest with the thought that God looks 
upon him as a guilty offender, and Christ 
provides for that demand. He must know 
God as a Father and man as a brother ; 
he must believe that the divine Father 
works in him by his Spirit for the perfect 
realization of this filial relation. Among 
the religious masters of the age Christ 
stands alone in his promise to meet and 
satisfy these demands. The promise made 
to Abraham, the hope proclaimed by 
Isaiah, the victory prophesied by Paul, 
and the consummation seen by John, all 
match well the claim made by Jesus, 
while the progress of the centuries and the 
signs of our times, now well above the 
horizon in all the world's vast heathenism, 
confirm us in the faith and assure us of 
its final victory. 



238 Christianity and the Christ. 



CHAPTER XII. 

CHRIST AND IMMORTALITY. 

'T^HE question which Job asked, the 
-■- ages have continued to ask, ^^ If a 
man die, shall he live again ? '' ^ The an- 
swer which Christ gave to his troubled 
disciples when they learned that he was 
really to leave them is the only perfectly 
satisfactory answer. He said to them : 

Let not your hearts be troubled: ye believe in God, 
believe also in me. In my Father's house are many 
mansions ; if it were not so, I would have told you ; for 
I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and pre- 
pare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you 
unto myself ; that where I am, there ye may be also.f 

This answer is a fitting climax to the 
system of Christian doctrine. That system 
subordinates everything to one purpose, 
namely, to the development and estab- 
lishment of the kingdom of God. 

* Job xiv, 14. f John xiv, 1-3. 



Christ and Immortality. 239 

But that kingdom is made up of individ- 
uals, and is nothing apart from them. All 
the agents of the kingdom, apostles, proph- 
ets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers are 
ordained to one end, namely, that the 
members of the kingdom may be brought 
** unto the measure of the stature of the 
fullness of Christ/' ^ Christ's teaching con- 
cerning man is that he is in the image of 
God ; that human souls are worth more 
to God than anything else in this uni- 
verse ; that they are so dear to him that 
he is ready to put himself to great cost 
for their redemption and deliverance from 
the thraldom of sin. According to Paul 
the whole creation has reference to man ; it 
goes groaning on toward the day of the 
manifestation of the sons ofGod.f 

If by the light of science we trace the 
vast movements of life before man appeared 
it is found to be toward conditions more 
and more favorable to brain development. 
If we follow the course of history since his 

* Eph. iv, 13. f Rom. viii, 18-25. 



240 Christianity and the Christ. 

advent we find it leading to conditions 
which favor moral development. Man in 
society must take up and deal with moral 
relations and obligations. Society forces 
it upon him. The goal of history is soci- 
ety under the best conditions. But that 
means society rich in the intellectual 
wealth and moral power of the individuals 
that constitute it. We see the bravest, the 
brainiest, and the best crowded to the front 
to serve the cause of society ; the bravest 
with pike and gun making war against 
impending barbarisms ; the brainiest with 
facile pen and eloquent tongue set for the 
development and defense of reason ; and 
the best ever engaged in the service of all, 
even the lowest, that man may be brought 
to the realization of ideal manhood. In 
spite of all opposing forces this stress is 
ever upon man to bring the fittest into serv- 
ice. Its root is religious. Christ's theory 
of man recognizes this movement and ex- 
plains it. We are sons and daughters of 
the living God, and God is at work in us 



Christ and Immortality. 241 

to make us fit for and bring us into his 
eternal home. 

That is the whole philosophy of immor- 
tality in a nutshell. The creation, endow- 
ment, redemption, forgiveness, and resur- 
rection, with all the great promises and 
inspiring hopes, are grounded at last in 
the unfailing love of God offered to us in 
Christ Jesus our Lord. The Christian 
doctrine of immortality gives meaning to 
all that has gone before it, and is the only 
possible rational outcome of the Chris- 
tian system. 

The expectation of a future life, with its 
rewards and punishments, is practically uni- 
versal. It takes on very strange forms, 
but under all its forms appears the de- 
mand of a religious ideal, which is consti- 
tutive of our nature. The Greenlander 
burying a dog with the little child (since 
the dog can find his way anywhere) ; the 
Winnebagoes lighting a fire for four suc- 
cessive nights on the grave of the departed 

warrior, that they may light the spirit in 
16 



242 Christianity and the Christ. 

its four lonely night encampments on the 
way to the land of spirits ; the Norsemen, 
with their palace Walhalla, the paradise 
of the fallen heroes, whence they issue at 
cock-crowing to sumptuous feasting and 
glorious battle ; the Chinaman burning pa- 
per images of houses, furniture, and what- 
ever else the spirit may need, thus passing 
th€m by fire into the invisible state for the 
use of the deceased ; the Greek who pun- 
ishes the Titans, '* those monsters who 
tried by piling up mountains to storm the 
heavenly abodes,'* and who requires all 
souls to pass the court of three upright 
judges; these,"^ and many other curious 
rites found among the Orientals, show that 
men everywhere feel themselves com- 
pelled to make provision for a future. 
Whence the inspiration of this hope? 
Why does man continue to assume and 
affirm the reality of the future life ? The 
old poet quoted by Alger says : 

* See Alger's History of the Doctrine of Future Life^ 

pp. 82, 178. 



Christ and Immortality. 243 

So, thou hast immortality in mind ? 

Hast grounds that will not let thee doubt it ? 
The strongest ground herein I find : — 

That we could never do without it ! 



That is the gist of it. But is our faith 
less commanding because thus anchored in 
the bed rock of our spiritual nature ; is it 
less fecund and consolatory because nour- 
ished at the fountain of our religious 
ideals than it would be if drawn up by 
the unbroken chain of a logical syllogism ? 
There are many demands in our nature 
for which we can only give the reason that 
we cannot do without them. We insist 
that the universe shall be rational and 
moral. On precisely the same ground 
the human soul insists on its faith in im- 
mortality. 

We cannot demonstrate the immortality 
of the soul. The claim that man is made 
in the image of God, and that the soul 
is as indestructible as God, or that the 
soul is a unit and cannot be taken to 
pieces, since a unit has no parts, and is 



"24:4: Christianity and the Christ. 

therefore immortal, is futile and false. 
God is independent, and the soul of man, 
with all created being, is dependent. The 
continuance of the soul in time and in 
eternity must therefore be forever depend- 
ent on God. It will not do to deny in- 
dependence to God, and thus wreck the 
whole government of the universe in order 
to secure necessary immortality to man. 
Paul teaches that *' In him we live, and 
move, and have our being."* That is sound 
philosophy as well as inspired Scripture. 
The fact is that this ideal demand of our 
nature needs to be supplemented by reve- 
lation. That comes to us in the words of 
the Lord Jesus. He satisfies our ideals. 
His teaching on this subject is therefore not 
only the only rational culmination of the 
Christian system, but also the only satis- 
factory response to the demands of our 
nature. 

The method of his teaching upon this 
theme is in harmony with that in all his 
* Acts xvii, 28. 



Christ and Immortality. 245 

teaching. He did not argue the case. He 
left that to us, who have no alternative. 
We must gather up the intimations of im- 
mortality and make the most of them. 
We may observe the caterpillar in his 
way through the chrysalis state about to 
emerge a beautiful butterfly ; may observe 
Nature as her forms go down to annual 
death. The winds sough through the bare 
branches of the later autumn, the storm rev- 
els above the grave of her beautiful children, 
and winter wraps them all in her spotless 
shroud. But Nature's children are not 
dead, they only sleep. Listen to the song 
of the mother bird in this May-time ; lis- 
ten to the rush of the life-currents along 
all the fruitful branches ; all nature is alive, 
and one would think, with the vigor 
and promise of life for evermore. We may 
add to this the inequalities of life ; the 
wicked are often fat and thrifty, and the 
good lean and hungry ; and to this the hard 
limitations of life ; the hostile environment 
that hampers us, the bad heritage in the 



246 Christianity and the Christ. 

blood that stultifies us, the insuperable ob- 
stacles that balk us and quench our aspi- 
rations. We may pile up our facts, the 
horror of death and the longing for life ; 
but though we pile them mountain-high, 
we are very far from a valid ^^ therefore 
we shall live forever." In response to 
all this w^e hear Lowell saying : 

Your logic, my friend, is perfect, 

Your moral most drearily true ; 
But, since the earth clashed on her coffin, 

I keep hearing that and not you. 

Console if you will, I can bear it ; 

'Tis a well-meant alms of breath ; 
But not all the preaching since Adam 

Has made Death other than Death. 

It is pagan ; but wait till you feel it. 
That jar of our earth, that dull shock 

When the plowshare of deeper passion 
Tears down to our primitive rock. 

All these facts are significant when we 
know that the world is bound to satisfy 
our ideals. That we can know only from 
revelation, and that revelation comes to us 
in Jesus Christ. He spake the authorita- 
tive word on the meaning of our life. He 



Christ and Immortality. 247 

was no scribe. He said, *' In my Father's 
house are many mansions/' He never 
wavered. He did not hesitate. There 
was no cold, gray doubt in his eye, no 
shudder of foreboding fear at his heart. 
He did not need to hesitate. He spake as 
he had always spoken, with authority ; be- 
fore all the great issues of life and destiny 
there is the same sublime undertone of 
authority. He dares to forgive sin, neith- 
er does his cheek blanch while he voices 
the word " forgiven.** He dares to invite 
the weary world to find rest in him, and is 
as calm as the deep sea. He commands 
disease and deaths and devils, and they 
obey. He did not need to argue from 
logical premise to heavenly mansions. He 
is more consistent. He did not vacate his 
authority by any such weakness. He spake 
as one that had come from the Father's 
house, and that knew whereof he spake. 
There is sublime consistency in the 
method of this utterance with all the 
high prerogatives he had assumed toward 



24S Christianity and the Christ. 

his disciples, toward the race, toward na- 
ture, and toward God. When our limping 
logic fails and our weak faith falters and 
all our hopes uprooted lie bare to the cold 
world ; when our ideals have fallen down 
from heaven, and life is not worth living 
then comes the authoritative word of him 
who spake as never man spake, with inex- 
pressible comfort and triumphant assur- 
ance. We begin to live again. The au- 
thoritative word of Christ, which has for its 
philosophy the unfailing love of God, just 
fits the ideal demands of our nature. 
While it is true we can sing : 

Give joy or grief, 

Give ease or pain, 
Take life or friends away, 

But let me find them all again 
In that eternal day. 

May it not be because this faith springs 
from an ideal demand of our nature that 
the poet deals so much more successfully 
with it than the logician? Construct it 
as you will, the isolated premises of the 
syllogism seem weak and empty. The 



Christ and Immortality. 249 

poet, like the prophet, is a seer. On the 
wings of his swift vision he sweeps by the 
plodding reasoner, carries with him the es- 
sential content of the reasoner*s premises, 
and gives us the total result of his vision 
in one adequate picture. Whatever the 
philosophy of the fact, the fact remains 
that the poet is the true interpreter of the 
Master's authoritative word on immor- 
tality. Lowell sings: 

Somewhere is comfort, somewhere faith, 

Though these in utter dark remain ; 
One sweet sad voice ennobles death, 
And still for eighteen centuries saith, 
Softly, Auf wiedersehen. 

Or we may find in Whittier's Snoiv-Boiind 
a simple melody that fills the eyes with 
tears. The "' youngest and dearest '' has 
slipped away, and he recalls her as she sat : 

Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 

Now bathed in the unfading green 

And holy peace of Paradise. 

O, looking from some heavenly hill, 

Or from the shade of saintly palms, 

Or silver reach of river calms, 

Do those large eyes behold me still? 



250 Christianity and the Christ. 

And now, when summer south winds blow 

And brier and harebell bloom again, 

I tread the pleasant paths we trod, 

I see the violet-sprinkled sod 

Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak 

The hillside flowers she loved to seek, 

Yet following me where'er I went 

With dark eyes full of love's content. 

The birds are glad ; the brier-rose fills 

The air with sweetness ; all the hills 

Stretch green to June's unclouded sky ; 

But still I wait with ear and eye 

For something gone which should be nigh, 

A loss in all familiar things, 

In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. 

And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee. 

Am I not richer than of old ? 
Safe in thy immortality, 

What change can reach the wealth I hold ? 

What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me ? 
And while in life's late afternoon, 

Where cool and long the shadows grow, 
I walk to meet the night that soon 

Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
I cannot feel that thou art far, 
Since near at hand the angels are ; 
And when the sunset gates unbar, 

Shall I not see thee waiting stand. 
And, white against the evening star. 

The welcome of thy beckoning hand ? 

THE END. 



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